A Season of Eden

by Jennifer Laurens

  I’d never heard the song he was playing. It was classical, with light, tinkling octaves that trembled over the notes in unanimous harmonies.

  When his voice joined the music again, my whole body filled with the melody. Soft words floated in the air.

  Weeping words of love torn, an anguished heart. My heart started to thump as his fingers swept the keys, taking my pulse and blending it with the melody.

  I knew the song was coming to an end, and I was frozen in disappointment. The tune slowed, each key played in aching effort. His voice quieted suddenly and there was silence.

  Before I could stop myself, I clapped.

  He jerked around, shock on his face, then an appealing shade of red crept into his features. He stood.

  “Hey.” He ran one of his hands through his tousled waves. “I thought the doors locked automatically when they shut.”

  “They don’t,” I said, stepping his direction. I’d never heard anything so beautiful, and now I saw him surrounded by an ethereal light of perfection. “That was amazing.”

  He smiled, and ran a hand along the old, beat up instrument in a gentle caress. “She’s been neglected.”

  I took another step, awe drawing me closer to him.

  “You play her perfectly.”

  He laughed and looked at me. Then he settled back against the piano, anchoring himself. He crossed his arms over his chest. “Eden, right?”

  “You remembered?”

  “How could I forget a name like that?”

  “That’s why Mom named me that…she said I was unforgettable.” Our gazes held in silence. A trembling shiver raced down my spine. “So, how long have you sung?”

  I asked. His voice still echoed in my head.

  “Forever. My mother was a voice teacher. She says I sung before I spoke.”

  “You’re so good.” I took another step. “Why aren’t you singing? Or doing something else? I mean, isn’t teaching lame?”

  “Not when you love it. You’re in Concert Choir, right?

  Don’t you like to sing?”

  “On a good day.”

  He let out a full laugh. He seemed to notice that I was closer then, and uncrossed his arms, angling them behind on the body of the baby grand piano. The smile on his face, in his eyes, slowly vanished.

  He cleared his throat. “So why did you sign up for choir then? Easy A?”

  At first I was startled that he’d asked. Then I nodded.

  He looked at me as if considering my honest answer, then crossed his arms over his chest again.

  “I’m a senior,” I admitted. “I wanted something easy, something fun. You remember how it is.”

  “Yeah, I remember.”

  “How old are you, Mr. Christian?”

  He wet his lips. “Twenty-two.”

  Every nerve leapt inside of me. I was eighteen. Four years was nothing. “Young for a teacher,” I said.

  “I started taking college classes in high school so I could get to work on a degree.”

  I moved to the keys of the piano and lightly touched them with my fingertips. They were cool, smooth and in my mind I heard his tune again. “I wish I’d taken piano lessons.”

  The thought came out a whisper.

  “Do you have any music background?”

  Afraid reality would turn him off, I lied. “A little. We have a grand at home but nobody plays it.” I wouldn’t tell him that Stacey had bought it just because it looked good in the floor-to-ceiling bay window of our living room. “So what other instruments do you play?” I asked.

  “Only this beauty.” He patted the piano again. The warm green in his eyes calmed me in a way I had never felt. The quiet air around us grew thick and dense. His gaze stayed locked on my face for what seemed like minutes, but I knew that was just my head playing tricks on me.

  The shrill tardy bell startled us both. When he didn’t say anything, the awkwardness remained heavy, but not uncomfortable. I liked that I could stand in the swirling unease and not get lost because deep inside, whatever was driving me closer to him had sunk its teeth into my soul.

  I was ready to ask him to play again when the door was flung open and our private silence was bludgeoned with laughter and talking. Sophomores poured in with the finesse of children’s wooden blocks falling on a tile floor.

  “I’d better go,” I said.

  He moved away from the piano, unrolling his sleeves.

  I watched him button the cuffs. “See you tomorrow,” he said.

  I was jealous of the sophomores then. They were getting their first taste of Mr. Christian. For the next hour they would hear his voice, look at his face. Hear him talk passionately about what he loved. I had to wait until class the next day.

  My house sat on a cliff overlooking the Pacific ocean.

  I walked to and from school because the high school was only a block away. It would have been stupid for me to drive.

  I was oblivious to the usual serenade of honking horns as I walked home. Friends screamed and shouted to get my attention. I waved to a chosen few, but my eyes were on the vast ocean just beyond the houses on Paseo del Mar.

  The view of never ending sea always comforted me when I was uncertain about things, and I was uncertain about Mr. Christian. So what if he was a teacher. I was eighteen.

  Graduation was only a few months away. There was nothing wrong with wanting him.

  Hearing the idling of a car, I turned. Matt hung out the window of his white convertible Mustang. Josh and Tanner were in the car with him. They had their surf boards propped up on the back seat and their wet suits tossed in the back.

  “Party tonight?” Matt asked, grinning.

  Normally, I jumped at any opportunity to get out of the house. The need inside of me was different now. “Um, not sure.” I stepped onto our stone driveway and headed to the security post.

  Matt followed slowly in his car, stopping at the heavy gates that isolated our house from the rest of the world.

  “My place,” he said.

  I tapped in the security code before looking at him.

  The gates swung open. I shrugged. “I have homework.”

  His face twisted. “You never study.”

  “Yes I do.” It irritated me that he saw me as some party junkie. But then, that’s what I was. Now, partying didn’t give me a buzz.

  “Whatever.” He backed his car out with a disagreeable screech then sped away.

  His reaction was so immature, I passed through the gates feeling justified refusing to hang with them.

  Home sprawled before me. I looked at the Italian Renaissance-style house my parents had bought some fifteen years earlier and wondered what kind of house Mr. Christian lived in.

  Gardeners were hard at work trimming cone and bulb-shaped hedges, pulling weeds and mowing yards and yards of grass. I never acknowledged the workers. They gave me the creeps, the way they stared at me like panting dogs.

  At the front door I typed in my security code again and then opened the heavy wood doors. Something with garlic and onions scented the air. Camilla, our cook, was in the kitchen, no doubt whipping up something ethnic. The familiar scents reached my bones with a hug I had come to look forward to each day when I got home from school.

  My feet echoed on the tile floor. I stuffed my keys in my bag and left it on the marble table in the entry hall. A quick scan revealed that things were just as they always were when I walked through the door, showroom perfect.

  Picture windows lined the back of our house, making the most of what my step mother called her “vacation backyard paradise.” Our pool, inlaid out of white stone, lay on one level, and our hot tub snugged up next to it, both in a bed of lazy palm trees. The ocean stretched out behind as far as the eye could see.

  I never bothered saying anything when I got home. Dad worked at his law office until seven. Stacey, my stepmom, shopped or lunched all day with her friends.

  William, my basset hound, was the only one who ever greeted me. He ambled slowly ove
r from a spot where he spent his days basking on warm tile where the afternoon sun shone.

  “Hey.” I scrubbed his old body with both hands because he liked it. He followed me to my bedroom on the second floor.

  I fell onto my ivory bedspread and lay looking up at the ceiling. I could hear William panting. The house was quiet, like it was every day when I came home. Empty and quiet.

  Habit had me reaching for my iPod to cover the silence with my favorite music but something kept me still.

  I wanted to feel the emptiness I lived in. Wanted reality to sink in. Lying there, a familiar anger flushed through me. It had been this way since Dad and Stacey had gotten married ten years ago, the three of us living in this big house with its big rooms. I was pretty sure only I knew how big the emptiness was.

  I rolled onto my stomach and looked into William’s saggy, sad brown eyes. Mom had given me William two years before her death. Four months after she died, Dad had met and married Stacey.

  Loneliness left my mind thinking about the night. Dad would come home, eat with Stacey and the two of them would either sneak off to their bedroom or take off to some place—friends’ houses or shopping. As if Stacey didn’t get enough shopping in from ten until five.

  Camilla’s cooking was just beginning to stretch its fragrant fingers up toward my bedroom, and my stomach growled. But I couldn’t think about eating. In my head I heard the delicate notes Mr. Christian had played on the piano.

  I couldn’t have what I really wanted, so I pulled my cell phone out of my pocket and called Brielle.

  Chapter Three

  Matt lived a few blocks away near Lunada Bay plaza.

  The night was dark and cold, so I walked there. I was used to walking places. And being alone on the street was no different than being alone in my house. Both were cold.

  Sometimes I challenged the danger of aloneness. When I’d been younger, I’d purposefully exposed my skin to cold, naively thinking Dad would get all worried and tell me to put more clothes on because he cared. That never happened. The self-inflicted discomfort toughened more than my skin. Like tonight, I didn’t wear anything over my short sleeved tee and I still had on my short skirt.

  Matt’s house was the party place for the seven days his parents were on their trip to Fiji. The one-story house was already rocking when I crossed the grass toward the wide-open front door.

  “Hey, Eden.” I glanced down, saw Tanner snuggling on the grass with some chick I didn’t recognize, both of them wrapped in a blanket.

  “Hey, guys.”

  Music shook the house. Couples were locked together on couches and in chairs, standing in corners. Some danced.

  The air was thick with body sweat and booze breath.

  “She’s here!” I heard Brielle’s sing-song voice and looked for her. She stumbled over with a grin, a silver can in her hand. “Baby,” she hugged me. “Matt said you weren’t coming.”

  She extended her can to me and I took a sip. I shrugged. “I was bored.”

  “Here, you have mine.” Brielle pushed the beer into my hand. “I’ll get another one.” Taking the Coors, I followed her into the kitchen were Matt played host.

  He sat perched on the counter, digging into a box of Pepperidge Farms goldfish crackers.

  “There she is.” The next thing I knew he was by my side, goldfish in one hand, his other wrapping around my waist. His breath reeked. He nuzzled my neck. “Can I have a kiss or do I have to clear that with you, too?”

  With everyone watching us, heat flushed my face. I swatted at him. “Forget it.” But I meant it and he knew it.

  He looked confused and angry, and tossed the goldfish box at Josh then got in my face. “What’s with you?”

  We’d had public fights before, but tonight his voice was too loud. I shrugged again, not sure myself. But inside a whirlwind had started and I knew it was only going to gain more momentum.

  “No, I’m serious.” He lowered his voice and grabbed my elbow.

  “Quit handling me.” I yanked free.

  “Why did you come here?”

  “It wasn’t to be with you,” I snapped. I didn’t care that the confusion on his face turned to hurt. Our friends stood by in nosey curiosity, and I wished they weren’t so drama hungry.

  Disgusted with the scene—with myself for going there, I turned to leave.

  “Eden?” Brielle followed me through the raucous crowd toward the front door.

  “Yeah, you do that!” Matt yelled at me from the kitchen. “Take your princess attitude out of my house!”

  The music was loud and most of the kids were so out of it I knew few had heard him. I didn’t care if they had.

  Being there suddenly made me feel like a loser. I was sure Mr. Christian wasn’t out partying. He’d be home studying music composition, or listening to an opera or something.

  “I’m out of here,” I told Brielle.

  “But Matt was joking.”

  “No, he wasn’t. And neither was I.”

  Brielle stumbled alongside me. “You… you and Matt are over?”

  “Yeah, we are. See ya.” I continued across the grass.

  Bree stopped.

  Matt and I had really only been two people playing at liking each other because being alone was the lame alternative. We’d both be news tomorrow. I’d be barraged by leftover guys. Once again, Matt would prowl the slim pickings of PVPS for somebody else. The thought was distasteful enough that I almost turned around and went back inside.

  I crossed the grass, caught the scent of weed in the air and glanced around for who was stupid enough to smoke it when I was sure the cops would be showing up any minute because of the noise.

  Oh well. I’d learned to say that phrase because it covered every error from stupidity to purposeful indiscretions by me as well as those around me. It was my way of throwing a protective blanket over my heart and emotions. I didn’t want my friends busted, but part of me knew they deserved it. I’d be happy if they all got caught and had to learn a lesson.

  The street was empty. The further I walked from Matt’s house, the duller the music pounded, lost in grey, misty fog oozing around the houses and trees. I shuddered, cold seeping into the empty recesses of my soul, and glanced into the dimly lit front windows of the houses I passed.

  Rooms looked cozy and inviting. There was something to being small, I decided then. But small still needed protecting.

  With my mind quiet as the street, I heard that melody Mr. Christian had played earlier that day. The melancholy chords cleared the cold fog trying to settle inside of me. I wondered what kind of house Mr. Christian lived in. I felt pretty certain he lived off of the hill, as we Palos Verdes residents coined PV. A new teacher wouldn’t make enough to live on the peninsula.

  I turned right on Paseo del Mar and the houses gradually stretched and grew from small and cozy to massive and museum-like.

  Mr. Christian. I wanted to know where he lived.

  What kind of car did he drive? Did he like fries or baked potatoes? Did he have a girlfriend? Need budded inside of me, filling every empty corner with untamed curiosity.

  I pulled out my cell phone and dialed four-one-one.

  There were, of course, thousands of Christians listed. I had no idea what his first name was, but as I typed the security code in at the front gate of home, I ran possibilities through my mind. What would people with a first name for a last name call their son? Never mind that Christian reeked with religious overtones. Would they do a double whammy like, Peter Christian? Or Gabriel? John? I hoped it wasn’t Matt.

  Finding out his first name would be easy. Discovering where he lived would be more difficult.

  I found Dad’s Lexus in our driveway. I checked my cell phone for the time. Nine-thirty. Why were they home?

  •••

  Inside, their fight snuck down the stairs and into every room with the pungency of garbage. Their voices broke through the stench, Brainless Bimbo. I hate you. My money.

  Our m
oney. Control yourself or there won’t be any money!

  With William dutifully following me, I headed to my bedroom and shut the door. That only buffered the screams, so I reached for my iPod. Soon, Muse filled my head and I couldn’t hear any more arguing.

  I sat at my desk, flicked on my computer and, with William watching, his long ears quirking now and then, I got on Google. I wondered if William understood English. If he understood what was going on between Dad and Stacey.