The Gardener of Eden

by David Downie

  Jackie is mentally retarded, with severe birth defects I find difficult to describe. Parts of her are misshapen and others appear to be missing—most of her right ear, for example, and several fingers. We spoke with her as if speaking to a child of four or five, staying for only a quarter of an hour, walking down the hallway with her, and leaving her back in her room sitting contentedly in front of the television, her faithful companion. I was surprised the TV worked, then realized the programs might be on a sanitized closed-circuit system.

  “Inbreeding,” Maggie said quietly as we exited, “incest.”

  The word smacked me in the face, waking me from the other urgent thoughts I admit I was having.

  On the way back to the bike path to the beach, I was about to ask what this visit had been about when Maggie fixed me in the eye and said in that low calm professional voice of hers, “Jackie is the eldest child of Sally Murphy, Tom’s mother, Harvey’s sister, you remember Sally from high school?” She paused. “Need I say more?”

  Waiting a beat, I shook my head, then I took Maggie by the hand and led her to a bench overlooking the ocean. Drying off the damp wooden surface with my handkerchief, I sat and pulled Maggie next to me, huddling close in the wind.

  “You’re not going to enjoy this,” I said, cupping a hand over her ear to avoid shouting, “but since you are aware of what went on, I must share what I know.” I instantly regretted my lawyerly tone and scansion. Without further ado, I told her in the clearest way possible about the closet and the air mattress and Harvey’s boast. Maggie listened with practiced patience and disinterested calm, as I always had when interviewing clients or interrogating suspects and expert witnesses.

  “That certainly confirms what we knew,” she said. Her face seemed to grow paler than before. “It was not an isolated incident,” she added, “it was repeated incestuous rape.” Maggie then explained that Sally was not only her friend of longest standing but was or had been a client and had brought Jackie to see her nearly a decade ago at her short-lived private practice.

  “Did Sally consider pressing charges?”

  A wry look took hold of Maggie’s handsome, haggard face. “Sometimes your ingenuousness surprises me,” she said gently. She leaned her head on my shoulder. “I think that’s another reason I always loved you. For a man who has seen what you’ve seen, to be able to ask such a question shows fundamental decency.” She stopped and laughed at herself for sounding so serious. “The Italians have a word for why Sally never reported him,” she continued. “I’m sure you know it: omertà. Don’t ask, don’t tell, don’t ever tell the authorities, and above all, don’t ever betray family or friends. The older I get, the more I think families are the same everywhere. It’s the Mafia’s modus operandi.”

  Pondering this before reacting, I bent and kissed her lips, then I said, “The Mafia dream is the American dream.”

  “The American nightmare, you mean?”

  “The dream is just greed dressed in frilly clothes. Harvey Murphy is the nightmare incarnate. He’s the mirror image of what this country has become.”

  “What it always was.”

  “Yes, but only in part, and that part was kept in check by counterweights. Now it’s in control.”

  We walked slowly over to the mall hoping to find breakfast, but nothing was open—the parking lot was still shin-deep in water. So, we headed back to the beach and strode north, eager to get back to Beverley and Taz, though uncertain about what course of action to take.

  “What about Tom?” I asked, thinking back to our encounter with Jackie.

  “No, he’s Pete’s,” Maggie confirmed, “so is Annie, the younger sister, though sometimes I wonder if they’re short a chromosome or two.”

  “So, Harvey got Pete to marry Sally to cover what he’d been doing?”

  Maggie nodded and shook her head simultaneously. “Apparently, he and Pete were sharing her. It’s worse than inexcusable, even among adolescents, and it makes me furious all these years later.”

  “Don’t get angry,” I said. “Anger just makes you sick.”

  “Yes,” she said, squeezing my hand, “I’m glad you agree, because I’ve got something else to tell you, and it’s even more important. It explains a lot of things, including the reason Alex hasn’t been confined or deported.” She went silent as we detoured around the obstacles on the beach. Glancing up, I was amazed at the ability of dive-bombing seagulls to stay airborne in the gusting wind, and I admired the way they stayed on balance no matter what nature threw at them. “Cool heads always prevail, don’t they?” Maggie asked a moment later. Again, I agreed, bracing myself for some unpleasant revelation. Sangfroid was essential for survival, I commented. “Promise me you will keep a cool head and not seek revenge,” she said quickly, “that you will not use violence, and that you will tell no one about this, not Alex or Beverley or anyone else?”

  “Tell them about what?” The impatience in my voice was hard to disguise.

  “Promise first.”

  “All right, I promise,” I said, increasingly anxious, my sangfroid already strained. The wind was another irritant making the conversation difficult. It blew us off course, catching my hooded windbreaker and turning it into a sail. As we rounded the giant trunk of a washed-up tree, bleached by the sun and worn smooth by the sand and waves, Maggie pulled me by the hands and made me sit. It was in this precarious posture, with the gale gusting and the waves crashing, that she told me about Harvey and how he had cornered and raped her in his parents’ house one day, decades ago, when she had gone over to visit Sally. It was way back when, she added, exactly two days after I had left for college, at the end of a semester break and our last encounter.

  I felt the blood rushing to my face, and tears of outrage and frustration filling my wind-stung eyes.

  With studied, clinical detachment, but in an unnaturally low, slow voice, she recounted how she hadn’t wanted to tell me at the time. She feared I might come back and spoil my semester and never get into law school and possibly do something rash. When she discovered six weeks later that she was pregnant, she wasn’t sure if the baby was Harvey’s or mine.

  “Or Professor Johnson’s, you mean?” I couldn’t help asking.

  She stifled a bitter laugh, covering her mouth then leaning over and hugging me. “Haven’t you figured it out yet? I gave you plenty of hints. Professor Johnson was gay. If he loved anyone it was you. He married me as a favor to both of us, so my parents wouldn’t force me to have an abortion or make me give up the baby for adoption. Actually, he was glad to have me as a cover—don’t you remember how hard it was to be homosexual back then? He was from Little Rock, for goodness’ sakes.”

  I was too stunned to speak. The enormity of it weighed me down. The only thing I could do was hold Maggie and rock back and forth. My head burned with apocalyptic thoughts. Harvey was not only a sadistic swine who abused his own sister, he had also raped Maggie and god knew how many others. And the child, Paul, whose child was he really, Harvey’s or mine? Before I could find a way to formulate the question, Maggie said, “Yes, he was yours, I felt he was from the start, but I couldn’t be sure and I couldn’t bring myself to get rid of him. You never wanted children, JP, you made that clear, and I didn’t want children, either, but it was stronger than me, do you understand?” She struggled to maintain a dignified facade. “I was not going to make you go against your convictions and spoil your career by having you marry a teenage girl, a ball and chain when you were up and running into a wonderful new life.”

  The wind helped cover my sobs. I could not find the words to express the thousand conflicting emotions tearing through me, burning holes in my stomach and setting my clothes and hair on fire. The monster Harvey had been right, Taz was my grandson. All I could do was chant her name, “Maggie, Maggie, Maggie,” and bawl, “What a fool I was not to track you down, an egotistic weak fool with bruised pride . . .” I kissed the tears running down her cheeks.

  “Maybe I shouldn’t have kept him
,” she said, “I made a mess of motherhood, and he came out so wrong, so unlike you or me, except he was like you physically, and he had so many of your mannerisms, it was uncanny. But he was angry and cruel like Harvey, and something kept nagging at me saying he had part of Harvey in him. I wondered if it was possible my twins could have two fathers, and Harvey was his.” She paused and blew her nose. “You must think I’m crazy. For a long time I thought it was an idiotic notion. I’m not a cat, even though he always called me Kitten Caboodle. It was only years later that I learned fraternal twins can each have a different father. It’s called bipaternalism. There was no genetic testing then and besides, I had nowhere to turn, I’d left Carverville. I was in a place where the Confederacy lives on, who was I supposed to confide in or get advice from? I was just a kid.”

  As if in a trance, I listened and could not stop shaking my head. “All I know is, I love you more than ever,” I said and meant it. “And all I can do is apologize for failing you then and thinking the worst, but we were so young, I thought you’d jilted me, I thought you loved Professor Johnson. Your pain is filling me now. You’ve lived a life of pain because of me and my stupid pride.” I thought of the long scar on her flat, white belly, and the stillborn boy choked by Paul’s umbilical cord, and I shivered.

  “No,” she said, pulling away and searching my eyes. “It was my decision, I took responsibility then and I take it now for what happened. I should have let you know. But when I did track you down you were married.” She paused again then added, “In the end what’s important is we have Alex and we have each other again. Harvey knows that if anything happens to Alex or me, Sally will turn on him and turn him in.”

  We rocked each other back and forth, letting ourselves be buffeted by the wind. Her words played in my head. “We have Alex and we have each other.” But I could not help adding a coda, a poisonous sting in the tail. We also have Harvey. His name and the image it summoned made me sick with rage. Who could she report him to, who could arrest or restrain him? Whatever happened, someone high up would pardon him, he would get away scot-free. My hands and voice trembling, I began to formulate some way to express my bewilderment and anger when Maggie stopped me and said, “Remember your promise. I know what you’re thinking. Don’t let Harvey get between us again. If you try to get revenge, he’ll kill us this time. I know him better than you do.”

  Her words cut deep. They made me feel like a powerless cuckold. I couldn’t help thinking, He won’t best me again, never again. I choked the words back. “Why in god’s name did you come back?”

  Maggie kept her cool. “Harvey was just a little sheriff’s deputy no one took seriously, JP,” she said. “We didn’t know he had friends in the bureau, and who could have dreamed up the turn things would take in Washington. I told him if he ever came near me I’d report him and he might wind up with a paternity suit on top of it. That fixed him good. Then Paul showed up with Alex, and Harvey started going after him, and that forced me to prove Alex was my grandson, don’t you see? Harvey knew he could check the results against his own DNA, and when he found out he was clear, I had to come up with another way to keep him off. Even when we were in high school together I knew about him and Sally, but I had no proof, and Sally swore me to silence. So, I used the DNA trick on him, I got his from Sally. She hates him as much as I do. Then we got Jackie’s DNA and it is incontrovertible evidence of incest. Dr. Dewey has it and so does my lawyer in the city, and Harvey knows it.”

  “We’re not dealing with a rational person,” I blurted out, my words sucked away by the wind. “We’re not dealing with functional courts of law.” Taking deep breaths and trying to regain my composure, I said, “Look, we both agree we can’t stay in Carverville. It’s suicidal. He’ll assume you’ve told me by now. He’ll hunt us down and grab Taz. He might even kill Sally.”

  “We’ve got to get out with Alex,” she said, her voice hoarse again, her head slumping on my chest as her facade of composure slid into the waves. “I can’t believe it’s come to this. I can’t believe our world has changed like this.”

  There must be a way, I told myself, to get Harvey. There must be a way to keep him from ever doing damage again. Silently I stroked Maggie’s fine translucent hair, the pinkness of her scalp showing through like baby’s skin. Cradling her, I stood up, my knees aching, and carried her to the tide line. When I set her down on her feet and bent to kiss her, we both heard the swooshing of the rotors and looked up. The drone slowed and paused and hovered overhead. Then it jerked up as if vacuumed from above, spun counterclockwise like a dog chasing its tail, and plunged into the breakers. We gaped with open mouths at the spot, then sprinted north on the tide line, our footprints scarring the soft wet sand.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  They had not expected to find a lavish breakfast awaiting them in Beverley’s kitchen. Out of breath and soaked with sweat from their two-mile run on the beach, Maggie and James discovered Beverley humming and smiling as she poured the buttermilk batter into the waffle iron. Taz, seated at the table, fiddled with the twin joysticks on his drone remote controller unit. The smell of fresh coffee wafted up.

  “Sit down,” Beverley commanded before anyone else could speak. “What’s the panic? Taz just got rid of one of those darn insects and no one can get at us from any side.” She twisted the volume knob on her AM radio and the 24/7 emergency report flowed out, a sober male basso with a rural twang, intoning names and numbers, damage estimates and warnings. The highways were still out, the voice said. The ocean was too rough for ships to land. The winds were too strong for helicopters to fly. The landing strip at Carverville’s tiny airport was underwater . . . Beverley lowered the volume and chortled. “Have you ever seen a sheriff more than one hundred yards from his SUV? I haven’t. No one’s going to hike in here. We’re safe and I have a week’s worth of frozen food and fuel, and a month’s worth of dry supplies, and the water comes from my well, so to hell with all of them!”

  Beaming, she turned the volume back up. Looting would not be tolerated, said the radio voice. Sheriff’s deputies would shoot to kill for any infraction of the public order. The state of emergency was now officially martial law. Mobile cellphone units with hydraulic masts would soon be installed in and around Carverville to reestablish Wi-Fi. Crews were working around the clock to get the telephone and power lines back up. If the weather held, the situation would begin to return to normal in three to four days. In the meantime, residents were requested to stay at home, stay calm and carry on—and help when and where they could. Beverley switched off the radio and seemed surprised that no one was cheering along with her.

  James shuffled silently in wet stocking feet to the bathroom and washed his face and hands before returning to the kitchen. Seemingly dazed by the surreal quality of the scene, Maggie had plopped down opposite Taz. He was too engrossed in his smartphone and controller to speak or look up. “Just a sec,” he said. “I, like, didn’t mean to crash it,” he added, smiling guiltily. “Next time I’ll be more careful.”

  James began to ask, “It was you—”

  “I thought . . .” Maggie started to say, interrupting him.

  “We were much more careful about disconnecting that darn camera on the highway.” Beverley overrode them with glee. “Taz is a young man of many talents.”

  “It was easy,” Taz enthused. “We, like, pulled the wiring out from below and sabotaged it and then covered things up so that, like, they’ll think it was water damage.”

  As they sat blinking in a state of shock, Maggie and James seemed to be watching a tennis match, their eyes and heads moving back and forth between Taz and Beverley.

  Sensing impending chaos and a culinary flop, Beverley ordered them to clear the table and make room for the waffles, butter, and hot syrup, the fried eggs and strips of bacon she was carrying across the kitchen on two immense platters. “Now stop wrecking the sheriff’s hardware, Taz, and make yourself useful,” she barked. “Can’t you see your grandparents are about to die
from caffeine deprivation? We have plenty to celebrate . . .”

  Taz pushed the controller away and stared into space as if he had been slapped across his goofy face. “My grandparents?”

  “Yes, your grandparents, plural, how can you be surprised?” Beverley asked rhetorically, serving up the food while the others sat speechless. She pointed at the eggs and waffles and bacon and made shoveling motions with her hands while raising her eyebrows like Groucho Marx. “After careful observation and study of your testimony, I’ve come to the following conclusion.” She waved the spatula at Taz. “You’ve got his hands and feet and eyes and height,” she said, pointing to James, who sat with his eyebrows arched, “and you’re about as distracted and ingenuous as he is, too. In a couple years, you’ll have his same voice, I wager. On top of that, neither of you gets poison oak and believe me that is as rare as an honest judge, apologies, Your Honor, but you know what I mean. You have the same queer mannerisms and Martian intensity, too, not to mention a peculiar brand of pigheadedness. Shall I go on while you let the food get cold? Now come on and eat, all of you!” She plunged in her fork, began eating heartily, and spoke before anyone else could get a word in.

  “I’ll tell you how I figured it out,” she volunteered, watching Maggie then James then Taz lift their forks wordlessly. “Look at the timing. When granddad here left town to go back to college after being here on vacation, conveniently your grannie there pretends to get hooked up with a gay English teacher so she can lay her egg in a comfortable nest where no one will snatch it from her. The fledgling boy resulting from this heavenly union of love birds can only be the son of Judge James Paul Adams, because as I know from Madeleine Simpson’s mysterious, nameless depositions over the years, he was her only and true love, though she did have a sticky run-in with some depraved blackguard whose name we’re all too familiar with.”