The Legacy of Eden. Nelle Davy

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СКАЧАТЬ to play with babies who did not know them. People mingled, smiled, and there was even a gramophone propped up on a stack of magazines on a chair. Everyone chatted as they ate and swayed along to the music, all of which Anne-Marie Parks ignored as she continued to ice her cake.

      Across from her, standing next to a dish of chicken legs, her husband, Dr. Lou Parks, a tall man with long hands, stood balancing a plate of coleslaw and ham as he tried to pretend that he could not see what his wife was doing. His companion, Joe Lakes, a local farmer, did the same and therefore most of the talking. He chatted about his produce, his animals, his work, anything to keep the talk away from the subject of wives and home. It was this kindness that made him bring up a subject of gossip he would never usually raise, but as he saw Anne-Marie use the flat of a spatula to swipe away a piece of icing that did not suit her, he grasped at the last piece of news he could find that might keep them going until the silly woman had finished.

      “You know they say Walter’s boy is coming home?”

      “Hmm?” At this, Lou Parks raised his face from his plate and fixed his graying eyebrows into half moons of surprise.

      “Don’t know for sure though, of course. But there’s been a lot of talk. Walter’s been laid up a while and Leo’s been manning things alone on the place for so long now, but they say Walter’s been getting worse.”

      Lou Parks kept his features stiff as he watched Joe scan his face for confirmation.

      “How’d he hear?” he said at last.

      “Telegram. Old Florence said how Leo sent a message by the wireless a few weeks back. She won’t say what it was or nothing and there weren’t no name as such, but she said the reply come back all the same and though she didn’t know what it was exactly, Leo opened it then and there in the office—he couldn’t wait. She couldn’t think what else could be so urgent.”

      “That’s not much evidence to suggest it was about his brother,” Lou persisted as he swallowed another forkful of ham.

      “No, no … true, but Mac at the hardware store said how their sister Piper had come down to get some more linen and stuff. Good kind, too. And when he’d asked her about it she’d sniffed and said they may be expecting visitors.”

      “Could be just that,” said Lou.

      “Nah, everybody knows Walter don’t know nobody outta town. Whole family what’s alive and they talk to is right here—all except his boy.”

      Lou was chewing thoughtfully when he caught a glimpse of his wife slicing away a piece of cake for the minister. The layer cake was all white now, with small red rosebuds lining the corners and forming a heart of sugar flowers in the center. He saw the minister pick up the fat piece in his fingers and his head nodded in silent agreement with whatever he was thinking as he devoured it.

      “Very nice, Mrs. Parks,” he said as he strode away licking his thumb thoughtfully. “Very nice.”

      A shadow of something passed over Anne-Marie’s face. What, he could not tell, and then she picked up her icing and the tissue and pulled off her apron before leaving the cake. She did not take a slice for herself, or for her husband.

      “I haven’t seen that man in a long, long time,” said Joe wistfully. Lou stared after Anne-Marie as she wove her way through the crowds, which parted for her, though not one person looked at her or interrupted their speech to address her. Lou’s jaw slowed to a stop. Quickly he turned back to his companion.

      “So how’s your knee, Joe? I noticed you seem steadier than you were last week.”

      “Mmm-hmm” said Joe, looking over his shoulder.

      “Another piece of ham, Joe?” asked Lou, setting his fork down and reaching to cut a slice.

      “Hmm? Oh, yes, thank you.”

      “No trouble,” said Lou, heaping the plate high and then Joe pulled up a chair and began to sit down. Relieved, Lou settled himself beside him and took in another mouthful of coleslaw as they silently and methodically began to eat.

      Later that night, as he waited in bed while she finished up in their bathroom, Lou thought back to the church fair. He thought of the cake and the delicate rosebuds, of the look on his wife’s face as she had stared at the minister who, blissfully ignorant, had greedily relished the slice she had cut him with only the barest of acknowledgment. She had lost herself for the rest of the afternoon, until finally she had slipped an arm around his waist just as he was thinking he would like to leave. They had passed the table with the cake as they walked to their car and he had noted that it was still as she had left it with only one slice taken away.

      He wanted to tell her his thoughts: to say them and wait for her response so that maybe then he would fully understand the meaning behind what he had seen, but as ever when she stepped into the room, her body pale beneath the white cotton nightdress and her hair crowding her shoulders in waves tinged with red, he opened his mouth and the words seemed to fail him. Instead of voicing all these thoughts he said, “You know there’s talk that Cal Hathaway may be coming home.”

      “Who?” his wife asked.

      “Walter’s boy.”

      “Oh. Why does that matter?”

      He turned to face the ceiling. “No reason, I guess.” He shifted so that his back faced her when she slipped in beside him. “Just nice for Walter to have his family back.”

      “What did you say his name was?” she asked.

      “Abraham technically, ‘cept almost everyone calls him Cal.”

      “Why’s that?”

      “It’s his middle name.”

      “Like me,” she said quietly.

      “I like Anne-Marie,” her husband said, an unexpected tenderness suddenly tugging at him. He waited for her to say something else, but she didn’t and so he untensed himself and settled down to sleep.

      Outside, crickets chirped before the milk of a half moon and Anne-Marie Parks heard them well until the early hours of the morning when she finally fell asleep. She did not think about what her husband had told her; there was no immediate reason why it should be relevant to her. She did not know that she would later marry the man whose name she had so casually forgotten as she lay hugging her pillow, waiting for sleep to come. Nor everything else that would come to her: things she stayed awake aching for, night after night, until she woke beside her husband, hating the rise and fall of his back because that, and not what she had dreamt of, was her reality. She was so unaware of what lay in store, of what she was capable, or who she really was.

      This was all when she was still just Anne-Marie Parks, the local doctor’s wife; seven months, four days and ten hours away from becoming Lavinia Hathaway.

      When Abraham Caledon Hathaway finally returned home, it was to find his father dying. The man who had once wrestled him down and cast his belt on his back at sixteen after he had stolen the family truck and gone drinking, had withered to a husk and now lay in blue-striped pajamas on white linen sheets.

      Cal had stood in the doorway of his childhood home contemplating how close his father looked to death. He was not horrified by this. He had met death already over a year ago. His wife had been decapitated in a car accident while СКАЧАТЬ