The Legacy of Eden. Nelle Davy

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СКАЧАТЬ in the same way she would continue to for the rest of her life: center part, long and down her back. A perpetual Ali McGraw. Decades after this photo was taken, she would be widowed, her children would be scattered and broken, her home rotted out from beneath her. In her last moments, did she think of this? I don’t know. I wasn’t with her, only Ava was there.

      She was not alone if she had to face her past and all its demons. And neither am I. I could feel them all pressing against me: the smell of my father’s breath … chewed tobacco and Coors beer somewhere to my left.

      I took my time with the album, even though inside I started to scream. My hands trembled but I continued to turn the pages. Each new memory sliced its way out of me, taking form and shape with all the others. I didn’t mind the pain—it was just a prelude to the agony that has been biding its time for the right moment and now it was almost here. With one phone call it was as if all those years of running away were wiped out in an instant. My life is a house built on sand. That should have made me sad but it only made me tired. I turned another page. We looked so normal. In many ways we were, except all the important ones.

      I flicked the page and saw my aunt Julia, whom I never got the chance to meet. Her hair was still red, before she started to dye it blond. From what I’ve heard from the strands of people’s covert conversations, Claudia was a lot like her.

      And then I looked up from the album and saw him standing there, the cigarette smoke separating and spiraling above his face. He was named after my grandfather, who was lucky enough never to realize what his namesake would grow into.

      “Are you in hell, Cal?” I asked him.

      He laughed at this. “Aren’t you?”

      “What do you remember?” I asked, suddenly urgent.

      “Same as you,” he said with a sly grin. “Only better.”

      “Don’t listen to him, honey,” my father said, lifting his chin in disdain.

      Cal Jr. shot him a look of pure hate. “How would you know? You weren’t even there!”

      I stood up and walked out of the room. This is it, I thought to myself, I’ve snapped. I’m finally broken.

      “You’re not fucking real,” I suddenly shouted.

      “Dear God, girl, still so uncouth,” my grandmother said, stepping out from the kitchen, her tongue flicking the words out like a whip. “I always told your mother she should have used the strap on you girls more often, but she was too soft a touch.”

      I turned around to face her, my fists clenching and unclenching by my side. “You—if you hadn’t—”

      She turned away from me, disdainful, bored. If this were all in my head, what did that say about me?

      “Enough excuses, Meredith.”

      I was shaking so hard, my voice tripped over itself.

      “You were a monster, you know that? A complete monster.”

      “Made not born,” she said and looked at me knowingly.

      “Oh, no—” I shook my head “—I am nothing like you.”

      “No, Merey—” and she smiled “—you exceeded all of our expectations.”

      I took a step toward her—toward where I thought she was.

      “I’m going back to the farm. To sell it, to take what’s left of your stuff and hock it at the nearest flea market.”

      “Oh, Meredith.” She sighed. “You’ll have to do better than that. Have you learned nothing? In terms of revenge we both know you can do so much more.”

      I shook my head and rubbed the heels of my hands into my eyes until the light grew red.

      “You’re not here,” I said again, but even so I could feel the light pressure of her hand on my wrist.

      “Neither are you,” she whispered.

      I opened my eyes and lifted my head. There: the fields on fields of cereals and golden-eared corn from my memory, from my dreams. They lay before me, an ocean of land, the colors all seeping out in a filter of gray.

      Exasperated, I finally asked her the question I knew she had been longing for. “Why are you even here?”

      “Darling.” She chortled, suddenly filled with unexpected warmth. The silk of her green dress grazed past my arm as she came to stand beside me. “We never left.”

      LAVINIA

      The Good Soil

      2

      I GREW UP SURROUNDED BY STORIES. EVERY-one had a story about someone or something: it was our town’s way of reinforcing its claim on its inhabitants. And they have talked to me and around me all my life, so that my memory is not just mine alone, but goes back far beyond my birth.

      In the half gray of a reminiscent twilight they stand there, waiting for me to allow them to be remembered. I can see them begin to open their mouths and flood me with their explanations, their whys and wherefores. They want forgiveness just as much as I do and they long for it now more than ever.

      But who should start? Who needs it more? And then she disengages herself from them, her form hardening from mere silhouette to actual shape. In a swathe of green she steps forward, out of time and dreams—a ghost who has walked the earth of my memory so many times, the ground is worn underfoot.

      What’s hard is not starting at the beginning but trying to decide where the beginning is.

      If my grandmother had to choose, for her the beginning of our story would be in May of 1946. We would find ourselves at a church fair with its fairly standard gathering of paper plates, white balloons tied to the end of red checked tables and the food is potluck.

      Father Michael Banville stands before a bowl of salad and dressing, chatting amiably with Mrs. Howther about the state of her geraniums. To the left of him stands a small knot of farmers’ wives chewing over the latest town news between mouthfuls of sweet potato pie, and farther on from them, dressed in a loose flower shift, her auburn hair bobbed to curl against her shoulders, stands a tall woman putting the finishing touches to her layer cake. She had brought the icing in a tube that had been wrapped in wet tissue and kept in her handbag throughout the service in the small white church.

      Every time someone passes and catches her eye she makes the same apologies about some problem with her oven the night before and how she had to run down to her uncle’s home to finish off the cake before the service, so she has had no chance to do the icing until now. People have nodded at these comments, even offered a smattering of sympathy, but mostly they have moved away wondering why on earth she would have persisted with something that circumstance was so set against. Why not bring a salad instead, or something simple? But no, they guessed correctly, she had to prove something. That was Anne-Marie Parks all over, they all thought.

      The potluck was a rowdier affair than usual. Enclosed by a series of collapsible tables with honey-colored deck chairs, the gathering on the small knot of green at the church entrance added a season of color to the otherwise mundane scenery of white building and sky. СКАЧАТЬ