Eden Close (23 page)

He looks at Eden beside him, at the tiny seed pearls of sweat along her white brow. He stares at the small blue feet making footprints in the limp grass. Time has contrived to shorten the distance between them. He has grown very little since he was seventeen, whereas she is taller now by several inches. Still, though, the top of her head barely reaches to his shoulder.

With his free hand he pulls his own sunglasses from his shirt pocket and puts them on. He unbuttons the front of his shirt, yanks the tails out. He wishes he had on shorts. He has said, improvising, that he is taking her to the pond because he wants to swim, but in truth, until he said those words the thought had not occurred to him. He doesn't even have a bathing suit here. Yet the thought of plunging into the water, now that it is spoken, is seductive. He wonders if there will be small boys there seeking relief from the heat in the pond—or if boys nowadays prefer to stay inside their air-conditioned houses watching videos. He thinks of T.J.'s mirrored hallway and of his own twenty-seventh-floor office in New York.

When they reach the path, she makes a movement to shake his hand off her elbow. She touches the cornstalks on her left.

"I can go like this," she says. "It's easier for me."

He walks slowly in front of her. Beyond the point they
reached yesterday, the path is sometimes barred by brambles, toppled cornstalks, densely grown underbrush. He uses his feet and hands to clear a way for her. He takes his shirt off and makes a fan of it, then a towel to wipe his brow. When he turns around to watch her, as he does often, he sees that Eden is stepping cautiously but evenly, with no apparent fear or hesitation. He tries to ascertain, from glimpses of her face, what her thoughts might be, but the set of her mouth below the dark glasses gives no clue. Rather she seems only to be concentrating on the map her fingers read and the progress of her feet.

Deep inside the cornfields—halfway, Andrew reckons, to the pond—he pauses for a moment to allow her to catch up, and it is then that he becomes aware of the sound, an intense resonant hymn of insects and small movements, punctuated at moments by the soughing of a dry sheaf or the quick whomp and flutter of a bird's wing, rising.

The path is shorter than he has remembered it and opens up to a grassy bank. Beyond the bank, the water shines like polished brass. Long vines have overtaken the trees, and the shade is denser at the water's edge than he recalls it having been years ago. A thick profusion of wild red lilies along the embankment, with the gold-colored water scintillating among and between the petals, stops him with simultaneous pleasure at their beauty and the guilty realization that she cannot see them. Should he tell her of them, he wonders, or is that worse?

On her own, she can go no farther than the cornfields, so he takes her hand and leads her to a damp grassy patch beneath the tallest tree, the tree most encumbered by vines and hence the one providing the coolest shade. She sits, leaning against the tree for support, her legs stretched out in front of her. She reaches for the hem of her dress and brings it to her face, wiping her forehead, her upper lip, the top of
her chest. Her thighs, uncovered, are white, with a fine down of golden hairs. She smooths her dress along her legs, covering herself.

"You can tell me," she says.

"Tell you what?" he asks.

"How it looks. Is it how it was?"

He surveys the landscape nearest them. "It is," he says, "but more so. The trees are covered with vines. The water is much the same. Do you remember the color?"

She shakes her head.

"Its gold," he says, "from the minerals."

"Gold," she repeats.

"And here..." He stands up and walks to the mass of lilies. He snaps one off its stem and brings it back. He puts it in her hand.

"Do you remember these?" he asks. "They're lilies. Red. They've grown wilder, thicker along the banks. It's hard to say if anyone's been here recently. There's no obvious debris left behind, no trampling."

The hymn he has heard before is quieter here. She fingers the: long crimson petals in her lap.

"You're going swimming," she says.

"Oh, I don't know," he says, picking up a stone in his hand. He looks at the water. He would like a swim. The surface of the pond is glassy, undisturbed but for the arcs of water bugs.

"You could come too," he says. "You could swim in your dress. It would dry in the sun on the walk back, and you could change before she got home."

She shakes her head. "I don't need to swim. I am just all right here."

He tosses the stone from one palm to the other. She leans her head against the bark of the tree, and he can't tell if her eyes are open or closed behind the dark glasses. Her
hands are in her lap, with the flower, wilting now in the heat. Even in the shade, the heat is enervating.

He throws the stone into the water. He stands up and unbuckles his belt. The clink of the metal sounds too loud in the silence. He slips off his clothes and his watch, lets them fall in a pile on the bank. He walks to the edge of the water.

The water at his ankles is cool but not cold. He wades out up to his waist, then lets his body drift slowly forward until he is floating. He raises his arm to begin a crawl, a lazy crawl to the other side. The distance seems longer to him than it did when he was a boy, but he attributes this to being out of shape.

He plunges his head under the water, feels the coolness drive the heat from his brain. He tries a breast stroke on the return lap, sees her through the rivulets of water that cascade off his head each time he comes up for air.

He turns and makes his way to the other side again, thinking that the rhythmic strokes feel good. But after four laps, his arms begin to tire. He reaches the shore closest to her, turns and thinks to make another lap, but stops instead to stand when the water is chest high. He looks across to the other bank, paddles idly in the water, feels the pebbles when he puts his feet down, then the claylike soil of the bottom. Lifting his feet off the bottom, he lets his weight take him slowly up and down beneath the water, blowing bubbles as he does so. The water closes over his head and then breaks again when he comes up for air.

He lies flat on his back, the water sloshing over his belly. With the smallest of efforts, he can bring his toes above the surface. He sculls quietly with his wrists. Squinting, he can just make out a corona in the whitest, most painful, part of the sky. It reminds him of something, but he can't quite seize the memory. He shuts his eyes, lets his head float too,
his brow and eyes sinking below the surface, keeping just his nose and mouth free to breathe. The sensation is delicious: the hot sun on the exposed parts of his body, the coolness beneath.

Behind his eyes, images scintillate, shine, disappear. A leaf, translucent with the sun behind it, fluttering ... Eden turning her head and smiling ... The sun glinting off T.J.'s sunglasses ... A sunburst sparkling in the fender of his car ... Billy with pennies in his palm ... A window somewhere throwing off the shimmer of a rusty sunset...

A fish slithers under his left shoulder, startling him. He tries to stand quickly, is thrown off balance, is blinded by the water in his eyes. His toes scrape a rock on the bottom. It's not a fish; it's her hand. She is standing in the water up to her chest in front of him. She is wearing her dress. Her arms are outstretched for balance, but it seems to him she is reaching for him.

He grasps her hand, pulls her off her feet so that she is floating. The skirt of her dress billows up and around her waist like a parachute. He leads her, as if executing a formal dance, until his feet leave the water and he must swim. He swims on his side, holding her elbow, letting her paddle with his support. He doesn't know what has brought her to the water—the heat, a desire not to be left alone—but he is glad to be beside her, to watch the concentration on her face as she makes her way in the unfamiliar water. He wonders if she has even once been swimming in nineteen years.

A third of the way across the pond, she breaks free of his hand, raises her shoulders and slices through the water with a knifelike crawl. She puts her face in the water, turns to the side for air, repeats the movements in perfect synchrony. Left behind, he swims ungracefully to catch up to her. Years ago, she was an excellent and tireless swimmer, making up in speed what she lacked in power.

"Make the turn now," he says, when they are near the other side.

She makes the turn but rolls onto her back, executing a smooth backstroke. He watches as each white arm rises from the brassy water with mathematical precision. Her hair swims around her, and her legs flutter, keeping her easily afloat.

"You can stand now," he says when they are near the shore.

Instead she makes a swimmer's turn and once again heads across the pond. He watches her for a moment, thinking to stay by her side in case she tires, panics; but so easy are her strokes that he is mesmerized, rooted to the spot. He lets her go.

She swims back and forth a dozen times. He is content just to watch her. When she is finished, she stands and pushes the hair away from her face. She is breathing hard. She rubs the water out of her eyes.

"You're still the best," he says.

She smiles, a real smile.

She has stopped twenty feet from him. He tries to make his way to her side, but the water slows him down. She turns and walks unhurriedly toward the shore. He watches as she squeezes the water out of her hair, then moves around the grass near the water's edge until she finds a patch of sun with her feet. She lies down with her dress on.

He pulls himself out of the pond and stands at her feet, looking down at her.

"I don't think you want to do that," he says.

He means get the dress dirty. It is wet, and the dirt will stick to it. But there is something else he means. Her face is smooth, in repose. The little knots of tension he has seen there earlier are gone.

She doesn't answer him. He studies her. He is looking at a painting in a museum, a painting of a woman with alabaster skin in a blue dress on dried grasses—a masterpiece
no one but himself will ever see. Her hair, in a twisted rope, lies to one side of her. He sees the softened knobs of her collarbone, the nipples of her breasts under the wet fabric. He sees the hollow space under the dress where the crease of her breast must be.

He crouches down beside her. Does she know he's there? he wonders. Can she "see" his awkward pose, awkward because of" his nakedness?

He touches the rope of damp hair, her brow. She doesn't flinch or pull away, and he takes this as a sign that she is waiting, He touches the knob of her collarbone above the top button of her dress. He hears a sound like a small sigh escape her, and she seems to arch her back slightly.

He takes his hand away. A voice cautions him, tells him that if he does this, there is no turning back. It is not a casual act; she is virtually a child. He sees her as a child, feels again the secret dread in himself, about to touch something he should not. Images come to him from his childhood: Eden sashaying to the bus; teasing him at the pond; pressed against a brick wall.

He undoes the first button, kisses the skin underneath. It seems to him her legs slide together under her dress. She raises a hand, then drops it. The wet cloth is tight across her breasts. He undoes the second button, knows he will not stop now, and peels the cloth back. He kneels, bends his head to kiss her, and as he does so, he feels her hand at the small of his back.

She moves away from him and rolls over. She rises to her knees, stands, then slips off her dress and her underwear. She is smooth, carved but not muscled. Her breasts hang heavier than he has remembered from his dreams, and this is somehow reassuring. Her shoulders are thin, and there is a hollow place where her upper arm meets her body. Her pelvic bones are defined. Around him, the sun glints brilliantly off the water and through the foliage, causing in him
a momentary dizziness. His mouth is inches from her flat belly, and he lets himself kiss her there. He lets his mouth slide along her as she drops to her knees in front of him.

He encircles her with his arms, pulling her face into his neck. He calls her name, an urgent summons, as if he were calling to her across the pond, or back across the years. Her name, spoken in that way, makes her shiver, and her poise deserts her then. He feels her break. It is a subtle movement in her shoulders, a letting go, so that he must bear her weight. She begins to cry. He presses her more tightly to him. He is glad that she is crying. There is too much that she is crying for, but he is glad, and he cannot stop himself from saying her name. He kisses her. He makes her open her mouth. He puts his knee between her thighs. She pulls her mouth away once, for air. He feels no hesitation now, no sense of caution. This is where his dreams have led him.

She knew it before I did,
he thinks.
She knew it years ago, when I was still a boy.

She seems unafraid now, though she has said the walk to the pond would be dangerous, and he misunderstood her. His balance lost, he takes her with him to the grass. Her thigh slides like silk over his, and her hair hides their faces like a cool tent. There is heat around them and the dampness of the grass, and a crow cawing irritably from the top of a tree. She clings to him, and he feels the sad frenzy of her nineteen lost years, but she is too shy to guide him or doesn't know how, and so he makes his own way, trying to be gentle, trying not to think of her as a child.

Later he will remember how a shiver rose from her belly and rippled out to her fists against his back. But he will remember, too, her unexpected delicacy. She doesn't make a sound, a silence he finds entrancing.

 

A
FTERWARD
she lies in the crook of his arm. He strokes the down on her upper arm. They both smell like the pond. She
might be asleep; he cannot tell. He doesn't want to speak. In his mind he borrows a phrase from her, one that he has liked.
I am just all right,
he says to himself.

His body is tired, and he thinks it possible he might fall asleep with her—something he must guard against. He doesn't know the time but guesses there can't be more than an hour left, if that. He wonders if she can tell time here, where she hasn't been in years, where the sounds would be different from those at the houses.