A New Eden

by Quent Cordair

  They were into their third hour and had drifted apart again when Harris noticed that Aaron had paused in front of a painting of two nubile young lovers sitting on a swing in a forest. The composition was that of reclining masculine line and pressing feminine curve, the accepting and the accepted, the longing and the longed for. The girl’s arms were flung around the boy’s neck, and the boy was gazing at the girl adoringly. She was spooned into him, lost in his adoration of her, in her eyes a boundless desire and expectation.

  When a group of fifth graders schooled around Aaron some minutes later, their docent became visibly annoyed at his not giving way – but he remained rooted to the spot. Harris waited nearby, giving himself over to studying the work’s sister piece, two spaces removed, another pair of young lovers, running through the wild together ahead of a threatening storm.

  Shifting his weight, Aaron finally began to move on, but not before stopping and looking back again intently, as if to burn the image into his mind’s eye. When Harris caught up with him, he remained silent, offering nothing about what he had thought of the piece. He remained quiet through the rest of the tour. Harris let him be.

  As they were exiting, Aaron excused himself and crossed to the main desk, where he made a request. A call was placed. A solicitous gentleman in jacket and tie, accompanied by a security guard, arrived in short order carrying a package wrapped in unmarked brown paper, for which Aaron signed. It was about the size of two large coffee-table books, stacked together. Through the ride back to the hotel, with the package on the seat between them, no explanation was offered. In the hotel lobby, after being assured that the professor wouldn’t mind entertaining himself for the evening, Aaron excused himself for the night.

  The shift in the young man’s mood wasn’t entirely unusual. In Harris’ judgment, Aaron was exceptionally intelligent, a genius even. While Aaron had easily kept up with whatever studies Harris had assigned – the professor had tutored him from age thirteen to eighteen – parts of his mind would at times venture away on extended odysseys, treks into the unknown and unexplored, inner journeys that could last for days. When he reemerged, he might talk about the paths he’d followed and the discoveries or curiosities encountered – but oftentimes not. Sometimes he would pose a single profound question seemingly out of the blue, leaving the professor to marvel at how he had come to it. Sometimes the professor, in trying to answer, would learn as much as the student.

  Strolling along the Battery Park promenade that evening, Harris watched the sunset from the very place that the colonists had celebrated the last of the British troops sailing away – aware, sadly, that he was likely the only person present knowledgeable of the fact. From the street carts, he dined on a hotdog and a soft pretzel. At a store across from the hotel, he bought a half-pint of bourbon and a pack of cigarettes. Other than an occasional cigar with Sam, he hadn’t smoked in the eleven years since he moved west; he hadn’t been close to being intoxicated since the first and last time as a college freshman. Tonight, he would limit himself to three or four cigarettes at most. The small bottle, sipped slowly, would last until midnight. He had perfected the pace of the ritual over the last year of his marriage.

  Taking the elevator to the hotel’s top floor, he found the stairs and slipped through the emergency access onto the roof. Sitting with his back against the wall, on top of what had once been his world, he took in the lights coming up across the city. Closer to the last sip of whiskey than the first finally came, if not peace, the customary detente for clearing away the dead and wounded. It wouldn’t last beyond dawn.

  * * *

  The Hale jet had been cruising at altitude over the Midwestern plains when the professor casually remarked that while the painting in which Aaron had been absorbed in the museum was enormously popular with the public in its day, it had also been, and still was, excoriated by the critics as little better than kitsch.

  Aaron nodded but offered no reply.

  The professor went on to compare and contrast the painting with its sister work, by the same artist – the painting of the lovers running from the storm – then compared the two to the painting that had been displayed between them, a work by the artist’s teacher. . . .

  Still no response.

  He expounded on the historical context of the three, with the later works, particularly, having been created during the decline of the Academy’s influence, as Impressionism was coming into fashion at the beginning of the slide from realism to nihilism –

  Aaron interrupted apologetically: he needed to finish a business report he was studying.

  Harris left the young man to his work.

  * * *

  When the limousine turned onto the gravel drive at Eileen Vasari’s, the dogs came racing down to greet them, barking alongside until Sam pulled up to the fourth in the line of cottages beneath the oaks, halfway between the house and road.

  Sam unloaded Harris’s bag. Aaron thanked the professor for his company, apologizing for his distance since the museum visit. But it was Harris who owed the thanks and he said as much. He wouldn’t have been able to afford the trip had Aaron not learned of his sister’s illness and paid for the flight out. The gratitude was accepted as a matter of course, and neither man made more of it, monetary matters being nothing between them, a standing long established. As teacher and student, neither could have asked for more of the other. As men, the ledger between them would never be closed and never written in.

  The limo pulled away.

  The cottage door was unlocked, as always. The dogs would have provided any necessary security, but there was nothing inside that anyone would want to steal anyway. There was no money. The desktop computer was as old as the rusting car parked next to the cottage. There were his hundreds of books filling the shelves, mounded on the side tables, stacked beneath the coffee table and in the corners on the floor. While most of the volumes were of negligible value, in terms of price, some would command hundreds of dollars on the right market, but only a person knowledgeable in rare academic titles would know the difference – certainly no one in Aurum Valley other than the professor himself.

  Leaving the lights off, he turned the computer on. When it finally booted up, there was little of interest in the email, including the college president’s newsletter, with the exception of the reminder of the short week coming, due to the Good Friday holiday.

  Little would be accomplished during Passion Week anyway. The professor’s classes would be half empty, many of the students having to work overtime at their jobs to accommodate the crush of visitors to the valley, others leaving town with their parents to escape the crowds. Others would slip away to attend the events and services, or to make mischief, or to take advantage of the influx of members of the opposite sex from out of town. Forbidden delights were to be found in the shadows during Passion, for those careful and skilled at seeking them out, those who could evade the ever watchful Angels. For the local boys, it was practically a rite of passage.

  The stacks of term papers to be graded were still on the table, but he could put off wading into that misery until perhaps the next afternoon.

  He looked in the refrigerator. The leftovers couldn’t be trusted. Nothing in the freezer seemed appetizing or worth the trouble or time to thaw and cook. After a third scan through the cupboard, he chose a can of bean-with-bacon soup and heated it in the sauce pan on the two-burner stove, adding a perfunctory dash of hot sauce.

  In the bathroom, as had become habitual of late, he avoided looking in the mirror, not caring to discover yet another crease at the corners of his eyes or more gray in his hair. From the top shelf above the toilet, he selected the worn French translation of Ovid’s Epistulae ex Ponto, with the marginalia by two previous owners.

  When his dinner had warmed, he settled into the corner of the sagging sofa with the soup and the Ovid. Clicking on the reading lamp, he pushed away the freshly opened memories of New York, memories of the position at the Ivy League university, of the tenure track, of
the prospect of a future in academia. The memories of Carol.

  He wouldn’t shed a tear – another habit he had perfected over the last year of his marriage.

  * * *

  Sophia Hale loved feeding her men. It was rare of late to have them both together at the house for dinner. Her son had been away for nearly two months, and her husband would be leaving town again the next day on another trip and wouldn’t be back until the next weekend. She had let the help go for the evening once the ingredients were prepped and the table set. She herself would do the cooking.

  Since the day she married into the Hale family, she hadn’t been obligated of necessity to prepare a single meal, but in truth, she enjoyed cooking even more than gardening. She had taken advantage of the chefs at the hotel over the years for her continued education. As a condition of their employment, she was allowed to substitute herself into the kitchen’s schedule, in any position for which the chef determined she was qualified, for as many shifts as she desired – though in the kitchen the chef was boss and she was to be treated as any other of his subordinates. There were weeks when she worked in the restaurant as many hours as in her own office. Being thoroughly spent at the end of a busy shift in the kitchen brought a special exhilaration and satisfaction. She might emerge from the fray cut or burned or temporarily humbled, but in the end, it was with a smile on her face and a clean pride in her soul.

  As much as she thrilled at the challenge of composing new and exotic dishes, for this evening she had chosen only proven winners, a menu that exercised her skills but posed little risk of defeat, the occasion being too important for experimentation: her customers’ satisfaction and pleasure were the supreme standard. She had asked the girls to set the outdoor table beneath the arbor, lighting the fireplace to stave off the evening chill. She glanced through the open kitchen window, reviewing the preparations. The fabric cloaking the arbor’s columns shifted with the wafting scent of the flowering jasmine and climbing honeysuckle. The stars were just beginning to find their way through the deepening cobalt sky. The whir of hummingbird wings played through the babble of the garden fountain, as the light from the oil lamps rippled over the china and stemware.

  She had considered employing the string trio she sometimes called in for special occasions, but wanting privacy and sole possession of her family for the evening, she had selected a program of Chopin nocturnes to play quietly over the sound system. She was busily assembling her vinaigrette when the first bars of a familiar melody ignited a vivid memory – that of her daughter practicing the very piece on the piano in the living room. She was momentarily caught between deleting the track from the playlist and letting it play over and over until the notes drove her to madness. It was a seductive thought, but madness wouldn’t do: the steaks would be overcooked. She forwarded to the next track. Jax had come up and was nuzzling her with concern, pushing his big nose into her apron.

  “It’s okay, boy. It’s okay. . . .” But it wasn’t okay. It would never be okay. She knew it. Jax knew it.

  When her husband and son emerged from the study, she took the wine out to the table.

  Roger Hale – erectly patrician and lean, with closely trimmed silver-and-iron hair – was not quite as tall as their son had grown, but in his wife’s eyes he always stood as the tallest man in the room. In a different time, he might have commanded a Roman legion or carried a debate in the Forum on the weight of a soberly pronounced judgment. Still in his jacket and tie, he had come home early to meet Aaron for a post-trip debriefing. At least that was his stated reason. Sophia knew, while Roger would be hard pressed to admit it, that after two months of separation, the man simply needed to be in the presence of his son again, and at the very earliest convenience.

  As they came to the table discussing the terms of a contract, she noted how they were communicating more and more as equals: Aaron was increasingly contributing, making the case for his positions and thoughts more confidently and insistently, questioning or varying from his father’s opinions more readily; Roger was listening more, yielding more, granting his son’s perspective more weight and benefit of the doubt. Regardless of any disagreements, both were respectful, enjoying and appreciating the other’s contributions, the father’s wisdom, experience, and breadth of knowledge complemented by the son’s energy, creativity, and fearlessness. They made a good team.

  And they were both so handsome. Sophia couldn’t have been more in love with the two. Having Aaron home again made her circle whole. What was left of her circle . . . She smiled broadly as she poured the wine, kissing them both before returning to the kitchen for one of Aaron’s favorites, the duck confit salad with shallots, bacon, and the ginger-pear vinaigrette. Jax positioned himself patiently under the table.

  Over the first course, Aaron shared greetings and news from their friends and associates abroad. When had he become a man? Sophia mused yet again. But then, when had he not been a man? The manhood had always been there. Even as a toddler, her son had always been serious. He had skipped crawling altogether, determined from the start to stand and to walk. He had always carried himself with that Hale self-possession and purposefulness. Her own gentleness and sensitivity were certainly there too, if less readily evident, and he had her family’s taller stature, her father’s eyes. Such beauty – a masculine beauty. In ways, he seemed so unmodern: he had never been shallow, uncertain, self-questioning or self-effacing. He was a throwback, a man’s man, without any of the false machismo. She was terribly interested in him – fascinated, really. As his mother, she was wholly vested in his well-being and happiness, of course, but she wanted more for him, and always more – she was insatiably eager to know how his story would unfold. Given his intelligence and character, he had such potential. . . .

  Since he had arrived home that afternoon from his trip, she was certain he was up to something. There was that distant look in his eye that the Hale men would get, the internal focus on a point on a far horizon. It wasn’t a longing or a hoping, but an intending, a determining, a puzzling out, less a matter of destination than of how to get there. Her not knowing his mind sometimes drove her to distraction, but she had to trust him. She did trust him. As she had taught him to trust himself.

  “Sophia?”

  “Yes, dear?”

  “Are you still with us?”

  “I’m sorry, dear. I was just thinking.”

  “Aaron was saying how much he thought you would have enjoyed the symphony in London.”

  “Ah . . .” she sighed. How long had it been since she’d first taken the children? “What were they performing?”

  “Tchaikovsky’s Fifth. You would have loved it, Mother.”

  They caught each other’s eye. So would Julie . . . They had both thought of her in that brief flash, but her son was there for her, understanding and strong, and she was grateful, and they let it go and moved on before her husband noticed –

  “I’m sure I would have,” she said, and smoothly shifted the subject. “Aaron, I must apologize about the redecorating of your rooms. The painters took longer than estimated, which in turn delayed refinishing the floors. The connecting hall is yet to be completed. I’m afraid you’ll have to use the east entrance for a few days. Fortunately, the weather is nice. I won’t be using this contractor again.”

  He smiled. “It’s nothing, Mother. In Athens last week, not only was the building adjacent to my hotel being demolished, there were demonstrations and even a full-scale riot one night right below my window, complete with Molotov cocktails. But I love that you care as much as you do. I’ve missed you.”

  She rose to clear the salad plates, pausing to kiss her son on the temple in passing. Her husband seemed preoccupied.

  “Speaking of delays – ” he turned to Aaron as Sophia departed to the kitchen – “I’m hoping now that you’re home you can be of assistance in getting our local projects back on track.”

  “We never have delays on local projects,” Aaron said, his brow furrowing. It was true – or at
least it had been: the Hales had always wielded more than sufficient influence and resources in the valley to get practically anything they wanted accomplished, however and whenever they wanted.

  “Both the Windsor development and the West Gate properties are stalled now. The environmental impact studies on both are being contested in court.”

  “Contested? By whom? Windsor sailed through Planning last month. We already have framing up on West Gate. We weren’t even required to have an environmental study on West Gate, were we?”

  Sophia returned carrying a platter mounded with grilled dry-aged ribeye steaks encircled with roasted potatoes, onions, asparagus, sautéed mushrooms, and crumbled blue cheese. There would be no hunger in her home tonight. Roger complimented and thanked her as she served him the top-most portion.

  The Hales didn’t usually involve themselves in residential development, but they owned most of the land between the city and the airport, and as the city spread south, developing the property had become increasingly attractive. The Windsor project, named in honor of the old prospector who had built a cabin on the flats when the area was still remote, would comprise several hundred new homes, a shopping center, a school, an office complex, and a warehouse and manufacturing center nearer the airport. In conjunction, the airport planned to add a new runway, lengthen the two existing runways, and upgrade the terminal and tower. The higher-end West Gate residences, overlooking the golf course, were being marketed as an extension of The Sophia, to include the resort’s spa, tennis, golf, and other club amenities.