Waiting for Eden

by Elliot Ackerman

  So Gabe kept tapping. He wanted to see if Eden would start again.

  It was a test.

  That night when she returned home from the naval hospital Eden had been cooking. The house was lousy with the smell of it. She came to the top of the stairs, where the kitchen and living room were connected and where the table had been set. He’d made salmon beurre blanc, a dish that was usually easy for him, but it hadn’t come out well. On their plates it looked burnt. Eden sat at one end of the table. Roles reversed, he acted every bit the cliché of an angry wife waiting for a philandering husband.

  The meal was a trap, though. That much was obvious to Mary. If he cooked she’d have to eat, and if she ate she’d have to answer his questions about all the things he’d now figured out.

  They sat.

  He served her.

  Each waited for the other to speak.

  She picked flecks of burnt skin off the salmon. As she ate, a mound of char slowly piled up on the side of her plate. Without the skin, the fish tasted fine. Hatefully, Eden watched her and shoveled down burnt mouthfuls, skin and all.

  Finally he asked: “How far along is it?”

  She told him and cleared his plate, bringing it over to the sink.

  He said nothing, but soon realized it’d likely happened while he was gone at the medical course. “There’s dessert in the fridge,” he said. He’d made strawberry ice cream the week before. She served it into two glass bowls and sat one in front of each of them. Slowly they ate, their spoons clinking against the bowls.

  “I wanted it with you,” she said; her eyes hung in her bowl and her voice choked around the words. She took a bite of the ice cream and it felt good on her throat, the way it feels good when you’re sick. She was crying now. “There’s a place on Piney Green Road,” she said.

  “You don’t do that when you’re married,” he snapped back.

  He stood from the table and took their bowls to the sink. He washed them while she wiped her eyes with a napkin.

  “I don’t want it if it’s not yours,” she said.

  She looked up at him, and as he cleaned he quietly told her: “I could never forgive you if you did that.” She’d expected him to want rid of it, but he wouldn’t abandon her child. And as she looked at him she felt it was his child more than anyone’s, even more than hers. He would suffer the most for it.

  Gabe sat by the edge of the bed. His palm rested on Eden’s side, on that soft patch of skin where the needle would go. Gabe continued to tap: shave and a haircut. He watched for some reply. He wondered what was there, holding on. Gabe refused to quit: tap, tap, tap, tap, tap…tap, tap. Over the hours the rhythm began to tweak his wrist. In total he’d spent three days with Eden, and it was almost morning now. Gabe had barely slept and he felt the weight of his work in his eyes and clouded thoughts. Thin sheets of light entered the dark room. So too did morning noises, traffic, birdsong and softly heard voices. Then a familiar voice brought clarity. It was the clacking of Eden’s teeth and the rhythm: 5, 1 / 3, 3 / 4, 1—END.

  And Gabe was listening.

  Mary called. She asked me to meet her at Onslow Beach in the afternoon. It was the Sunday before we deployed. The message she’d left on my phone hadn’t said why, she’d just said that she was going to be there and that she needed me to come.

  I hadn’t seen her since that night at her house.

  I got there early. I parked and then walked onto the beach through a split in the dunes. This was the deepest part of winter and I could feel the cold sand through my shoes. The air was very clear and in it seagulls floated on an offshore breeze. I sat on the sand. Some weeks before, a storm had come through, and down the beach a bulldozer was rebuilding the dunes.

  Behind me, her car pulled up. I stayed sitting down. She came through the split in the dunes and looked past me, to the ocean. The waves lapped easily on the smooth, wet beach. It shone like a sharkskin. Then she saw me just behind her. She wore jeans, a baggy sweatshirt hid her stomach. Her dark hair was pulled back in a ponytail. The wind ran in her face, her eyes watered and it looked like she’d been crying. But I knew she hadn’t.

  I stood up. She sat down.

  I sat down.

  “You heard our news?” she asked.

  “Let’s talk in the car,” I said. “It’s freezing.”

  She ignored me. “It’s not yours,” she replied.

  “Is that why you wanted to see me?”

  “I didn’t want you to wonder about whose it was.” Her eyes wandered down the beach, toward the bulldozer. She began to shiver a little.

  “You told me you were pregnant that night. I hadn’t been wondering.”

  “Good,” she said and didn’t say anything else. We sat like this for a while. The seagulls overhead soon grew bored with us and floated farther out to sea. She kept her look fixed down the beach, away from me, toward the dunes that needed rebuilding. Turned like this, the offshore breeze was no longer in her face. Then she finally looked to me. Now her eyes were wet and red from crying, not from the wind. Quickly she kissed me on the mouth. Her lips were cold and slack. I would’ve returned her kiss, but she didn’t give me the time. She stood and walked back through the split in the dunes. I heard her car start and she left. I sat on the beach for a long while. The sand became colder. The seagulls flew back inland and the driver on the bulldozer finished his shift.

  The day we deployed Eden and Mary woke up together. The only light in the room was from the digital clock’s red numbers on the bed stand. It was four a.m. She turned off the alarm before it could start and Eden turned on a lamp. He had to be at work by five and the buses would take everyone to the air station at six. He put on his uniform. She put on yoga pants and a T-shirt and her bump showed through the T-shirt.

  While she was in the bathroom he made them both coffee—it was too early for breakfast. When he handed her the cup she refused it. He apologized, forgetting that she could no longer have coffee.

  Then he made her some tea and went out into the cold, to the driveway. Here he turned on the old Mustang, heating it up for her too.

  When he came back inside he brought her coat upstairs. He helped her put it on. He even zipped the front, paying extra care to her stomach. He wanted to be kind in the way a good father should be to a mother.

  As they walked downstairs to the driveway, he gave her his one free hand and held both his coffee and her tea in the other. She didn’t need his help with the stairs, it seemed like a silly gesture to her, but still she took it. His bags were already loaded in the back of the car, and as they got in she insisted on driving—that was for her to do. Despite how much she wanted him to stay, she’d be the one to drop him off.

  During the ride in neither of them spoke and on the road there were few cars. They drove past the gym where Mary had worked—being pregnant, she’d since quit the job. At this hour its parking lot was empty. In a couple of hours, when she drove back, it would be filled with the cars of her old students. Then, a little farther down, they passed the Days Inn. Up ahead she could see the turnoff to Piney Green Road. The traffic light switched from green to yellow. She accelerated toward the intersection. The light went red and she ran it. She couldn’t imagine sitting beneath that road sign with him.

  Mary slowed the car down and Eden looked over at her. “Maybe when I come back we’ll try to find a place closer to the beach,” he said.

  Mary glanced back at him. Traffic lights and neon signs shone against his face, reflecting too many colors at once. “With the baby it’d be nice to be near the beach,” she said.

  “We could take her for walks there.”

  “When do they learn to swim?” she asked.

  “Three, I think.”

  “Three,” she replied. “That’s not so long to wait.”

  They parked a few blocks away from Eden’s work. He wanted to say goodbye t
o her in private, without everybody else’s goodbyes crowding in. She climbed out of the car and into the cold. He heaved his duffel bag and rucksack from the trunk. They stood by the front tire. The car’s hazard lights flashed in the darkness. Far away from them the first of the morning etched out black treetops against a bluing sky. They looked at each other as though they might kiss, but they couldn’t. Instead she held his hand on her stomach. “You want this,” she said.

  He nodded.

  I won’t give up on you again, she thought, and felt this promise like a tear in her heart.

  Two days after he left, Mary made a trip back to her lawyer’s office. She needed to pick up Eden’s power of attorney. The lawyer gave her an envelope with it and some other paperwork inside. One of the papers was a copy of Eden’s life insurance policy, Form Number SGLV 8286. Reading over the document, she saw the money hadn’t been left to her. At first glance the name in the recipient box was one she didn’t even recognize, but strangely the address listed beneath it was her own. Then, holding the form, she understood. The money had been left to her daughter and Eden had already picked the girl’s name: Andromeda.

  Mary dropped Andy at daycare and walked quickly over to the main hospital. When she came out of the elevator, Gabe was waiting for her on the fourth floor. Mary walked straight toward Eden’s room, but Gabe stood in front of her. He asked her to sit with him in one of the chairs that lined the corridor. She looked past him, at the door to Eden’s room.

  Then she sat.

  Gabe started by explaining Eden’s stroke, and how sometimes a stroke can reawaken parts of the brain that might have been traumatized before. He told her how Eden’s stroke on Christmas night might have brought some dormant parts of him back. As Gabe talked, he could see a crazy type of hope spreading through Mary. He knew she wondered what else might come back. These were dangerous optimisms and Gabe tried to diffuse them. He told her: “Waking up has put him in more pain than ever. It’s not fair to keep him in this condition for long.”

  “Fair?” she said.

  Gabe then explained how he’d figured out the tap code. He also explained that Eden would send only one message. Then Gabe told Mary what that message was and she looked away from him and rubbed the back of her neck. Gabe could see she was upset, but he went on: “It’s what he wants. He won’t feel any pain.”

  She looked back at Gabe. “Can I see my husband now?”

  The two of them stood and walked down the corridor. Mary went into Eden’s room alone. The lights were off and daylight seeped in from beneath the blinds. The steady and familiar sounds of his vitals pinged in the quiet. She climbed onto his bed and lay on her side next to him, careful not to disturb the tangle of wires that tethered his body to the machines. She placed her hand against his side, on the smooth patch of skin, to let him know that she was listening. He began to clack his teeth, just as Gabe had said he would.

  END, END, END, he asked his wife.

  Eden waited for what she would tell him. His mind was clear. With her near, he felt ready. He wondered when her palm would move away from his side. He’d feel the sticking of the needle there, and then the end. He didn’t want to leave her. She’d given him everything, herself and a daughter when he couldn’t have one. She was a fine wife, he thought, all she’d ever wanted was him.

  Then he felt her message tapped out against his side: 3, 3 / 4, 3—NO.

  He looked up at the dark shadow of her, disbelieving that she wouldn’t give him this last thing. He tapped his message again and harder: END.

  NO, she tapped back.

  He thrashed in his bed. He felt her pin him down. He writhed against her, clacking his message. Why can’t you find the strength to let me go, he thought. You gave up on me once, do it again, do it when I need you to. His mind twisted over itself, bending into dark corners. Still he tried to work at his message, but he began to lose the clarity of his intentions. Now his clacking receded into an unintelligible jaw grinding. His mind slipped into a rage. The parts of him that had been in focus began to melt, forming into some new amalgam. His mind lapsed, but his vision became clearer. His body continued to thrash, harder and harder, finding reserves of strength he didn’t know. The door to his room opened. Everything filled with light. Now, being able to see again, Eden caught a full glimpse of Gabe rushing toward his bed. The big nurse looked older than Eden had imagined. He caught a glimpse of Mary too, and he could see her holding him down. She also looked older. And her face was all strength and conviction. For the briefest moment he felt content seeing these people who gathered around him in their desperation.

  Then he looked away from them, toward the light in the door. It began to wash out the entire room, turning everything to white. And before that light blotted out all he’d ever known or seen, something crept into his room from the corridor. It was the cockroach from before. It’d been there all along, waiting for him.

  Something in Eden split. His world turned to white. He would’ve sworn he was dead except he could still feel the stubborn beating of his heart.

  Those days when Eden awoke happened years ago. I’ve been here every day since, in this between space that is empty and white, waiting for him, just like she does. We both wonder what will happen to us when he finally goes. Maybe I’ll pass on to another place where there is no waiting and everything has ended. Maybe she’ll go back to her mother and daughter, and her choices and memories will become far-off things. But those are distant worlds, and for now we remain here.

  In the mornings she still walks into his room and takes her place on the sofa by his bed. Each day she places her hand against the smooth patch of skin on his side. On her good days she taps how her love for him remains. On her bad days she taps how sorry she is. Good or bad, though, he never reacts to these messages. But there is one thing he does react to. In the evenings, before she goes back to her room in the dormitory, she presses her hand against his side. Then she taps out what his number will be if he goes in the night. His reaction is subtle, but always the same: he shuts his eyes and he sleeps.

  Sometimes, when he dreams, he and I meet in this between place. Always he’s happy to see me and always we sit as old friends. We only ever talk about one thing, and it isn’t the Hamrin Valley, his time with her at Onslow Beach or my time with her at his house, and it isn’t the choices Mary has made. What we talk about is our daughter and that we may have pain but not that regret.

  Som natural tears they drop’d, but wip’d them soon;

  The World was all before them, where to choose.

  Thir place of rest, and Providence thir guide:

  They hand in hand with wandring steps and slow,

  Through Eden took thir solitarie way.

  —John Milton, Paradise Lost

  With thanks to:

  Lea Carpenter,

  Ben Fountain,

  PJ Mark,

  Diana Miller,

  Robin Desser

  and

  Sonny Mehta

  A Note About the Author

  Elliot Ackerman is the author of the novels Dark at the Crossing, which was a finalist for the National Book Award, and Green on Blue. His writings have appeared in Esquire, The New Yorker, The Atlantic and The New York Times Magazine, among other publications, and his stories have been included in The Best American Short Stories. He is both a former White House Fellow and a Marine, and served five tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan, where he received the Silver Star, the Bronze Star for Valor and the Purple Heart.

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