He and Eden ate quietly, but Ben couldn't take his eyes off Alex and Leslie. How many dozens of picnic suppers had he and Sharon eaten with the Parrishes over the years? He even knew what would be in their basket: oven-fried chicken, three-bean salad with black olives, flan for dessert.
Leslie and Kim suddenly got up and headed toward the concession stand, and Ben stood up himself.
“I'll be back in a minute,” he said to Eden. He walked through the crowd until he reached Alex's blanket, where he sat down without waiting for an invitation.
Alex looked over at him in surprise. “Ben, I don't think—”
“Do you have any idea how it feels to have your best friend cut you out of his life?” Ben interrupted him.
“Yeah, well, I lost my best friend in this whole mess too.” Alex looked terrible. He was aging quickly, badly, as though this last year had taken a toll on him as well. His face was jowly, or maybe it was just that Ben was not accustomed to seeing him without a smile.
“You didn't have to lose me,” Ben said.
Alex shook his head and looked at Ben with an acidic sneer. “Eden Riley, Ben? Kyle gives you a job and throws in his niece as a bonus, huh? Christ. Maybe I ought to screw my daughter and see what I can get.”
Ben wanted to hit him. “Fuck you. “ He spoke through gritted teeth, painfully aware of the futility of his words.
Alex swirled the wine in his glass and looked toward the concession stand. “Look, we have nothing to talk about. You'd better get back to your blanket and your movie star.”
Ben didn't move. He pulled a splinter of rattan from the open picnic basket. He could see the flan inside, uneaten. “Have you seen Bliss lately?” He had to know.
Alex hesitated a moment. “Yesterday. We spent the day out there at the pool.”
Ben pictured the scene. His house, his pool, his wife and daughter and best friend, and the stranger who had walked in and taken his place. “Does she seem happy?” Ben asked.
“What do you want to hear, Ben? That she's miserable now that she's lost her abusive daddy? Yes, she's happy. She's just fine.”
“What's Jeff like?”
Alex shrugged. “He's okay.”
“Can you put yourself in my shoes for just a second?”
Alex laughed. “No, Ben, I cannot. I can't possibly imagine what it's like to feel an uncontrollable urge to molest my daughter.”
“I'm innocent, Alex. The thing that bothers me the most is that you've never been willing to talk to me about this, to hear my side. All you know is what you read in the papers or heard through the grapevine.”
“I was at the trial, Ben.”
“You were?”
“Every day. I wanted to see for myself. I sat in the back. I heard the evidence. I saw you freak out when Bliss was about to testify against you. I heard you confess. What am I supposed to believe? So don't tell me I didn't try to see it your way. I wanted to hear you were innocent.” He looked toward the concession stand again. “You'd better go back. Leslie doesn't even let me speak your name around the house.”
Ben stood up.
“One more thing, Ben.” Alex looked up at him. “I have to ask you this. Don't worry, I won't press charges or anything, but I need to know. Do you remember a couple of years ago when Kimmie stayed with you and Sharon while Leslie was visiting her mother?”
Ben nodded.
“Well, she started having horrendous nightmares after that. I have to know. Did you do anything to her back then?”
Ben swallowed the bile rising in his throat. He turned his back on Alex and walked across the lawn to Eden as quickly, as proudly, as he could.
The show was lost on him. He told Eden about his conversation with Alex, but then fell quiet for the rest of the evening while Eden held his hand, stroked his back. He said little on the long drive home. When they pulled into the clearing by his cabin, he turned to her.
“I'm glad tonight happened,” he said. “This is reality. You needed to see it. I needed to see it. We have to stop pretending. All the talk about us having a normal life together is fantasy, Eden. You need to think long and hard about what you're getting yourself and Cassie into. And I have a favor to ask. If you don't think you can handle it, please leave me now? Don't wait until I'm so full of hope about us that I—”
“Shush.” She turned in the seat and put her arms around him. “I love you. And I'm in way too deep to get out now, even if I wanted to.”
Once in the steamy darkness of his cabin, she sat him down on the bed and undressed him, her fingers cool and silky where they met his skin. He thought he would be unable to make love to her, but she was patient and persistent. And he thought he would be unable to sleep, but his dreams came quickly and they were safe dreams, easy dreams. Just once did he wake up in the middle of the night. He could see the light on by the sofa, could see Eden curled up there in his boxer shorts and T-shirt, the notebook open on her knees. He heard her sniffling, saw the crumpled tissue in her hand, and let her be.
–37–
March 10, 1955
All the world thinks the baby I'm carrying is Matt's. Only Matt and I know the truth. It's odd how people just assume things about me. I never announced my pregnancy, and no one ever asked me, “Are you pregnant?” But Susanna and Daddy gradually noticed the change in my shape and Susanna bought me a couple of maternity dresses without ever commenting on how it is I came to be this way. So now I wear dresses, which are not as uncomfortable as I recall dresses being, but maybe it's just that my middle enjoys feeling untethered for a while.
Daddy says I have to marry Matt, and Matt is begging. I think Matt has actually started to believe this baby is his. I don't want to marry him, but last night Susanna gave me a long lecture about bow every baby deserves two parents. “Think of the child,” she said. She is right. I don't want my baby to grow up a bastard, feeling different from other children. I know what it's like to be set apart, and I don't want that for my baby. I have such hopes for this little one. So I've decided to tell Matt yes, so long as we can stay here near the cave. I could not move into his house, so far from Lynch Hollow.
I'm thinking about my own mama again, my real mama. I don't feel at all disgraced, like she did. I wish she could have had a man like Matt to save her from her shame.
March 22, 1955
We were married quickly by a judge friend of Matt's on the nineteenth of March. I think it was the right thing to do. We didn't take a honeymoon or any of that nonsense. Instead, we spent our wedding night at his house, talking about the details of this marriage. I was nervous, spending the night away from Lynch Hollow, and Matt just held me the night through. He is so dear, and he understands my feelings well. He said that he will sell his house and that he has spoken to Daddy about building a second story onto our house for us to live in. He asked me what I want to do about sex. I felt shy all of a sudden, but told him I would like to wait to make love until after the baby's born. I pretended it was that I am uncomfortable with my expanding belly, but really I am not yet ready to let him erase Kyle's mark on my body. Matt agreed to this without hesitation, although he was quick to say he is not at all put off by my pregnancy and if I should change my mind before the baby comes, to let him know.
I do plan to let Matt make love to me after the baby's born. I couldn't marry him and then cruelly turn him away. And it will be worth it if it means more children.
I wrote to Kyle about the marriage but still have said nothing about the baby.
May 1, 1955
I've been sitting here in the cave for the last hour, just staring at this blank page, trying to think of words to describe my terrible sadness.
Matt died yesterday. He was working on the second story of the house when he fell, breaking his neck. I was here in the cave when Daddy came to tell me and I wept until I was sick. Why such a good man? Why not me instead? I am selfish and demanding and obstinate. Matt should have married Delores Winthrop. He would have had his nice, settled-down sort of life.
He should have told me—like any other man would tell his wife—”I've got a perfectly fine house and you're going to live in it with me.” Instead he was building that second story. For me and for Kyle's child. If taking my own life would give his back to him, I would do it in an instant. I loathe myself right now. I wish that we had made love, that I had given him that. I wish he had not been so quick to put up with me, that he had demanded more of me. I wouldn't have loved him less.
Daddy has sent word to Kyle.
May 4, 1955
We still had heard nothing from Kyle by the time the funeral started yesterday. Naylor's Funeral Parlor was packed with the staff from Matt's paper and community people who'd come to know and respect him. I sat up front, with Daddy and Susanna. Susanna had somehow found a black maternity dress for me. I could hardly sit still, hardly breathe. My belly is so big it's left no room for any air in my lungs. I felt sweat rolling down my back and between my breasts. And I could feel all the people behind me, staring at me, whispering about me.
When the preacher started talking, I spotted Kyle at the side door. He walked towards us quickly, his shoes clicking too loudly on the floor, and slipped into the seat between Daddy and me. He kissed my cheek and held my hand. I had to breathe through my mouth to keep from crying.
The preacher said some nice things about Matt, but he went on too long and I could feel Kyle's eyes on my belly. Then I knew he was doing the arithmetic in his head, ticking back the months. His hand squeezed mine hard and he said in a whisper only I could hear, “Oh my God, Kate.” Both of us stared at the preacher, not hearing a word the man said.
In the graveyard, Kyle literally held me up. When it was over and Matt was in the ground, Kyle told Daddy he would bring me home. We waited 'til the crowd left and then sat at the side of Matt's new grave.
“Why didn't you tell me?” he asked. “I know people in New York who could have taken care of it.”
“That's why I didn't tell you.”
“It might have terrible problems because of us being related.”
“I don't care.”
“Did Matt think it was his?”
“Matt and I never made love. He knew the baby was yours."
Kyle put his head in his hands and sat that way for a long time. Finally he raised his head up and said he would leave school and move back to Lynch Hollow. He wouldn't go to South America. He could work in our digs and take care of me and the baby.
I told him I didn't want that. One man had already sacrificed his life for me and I wasn't about to let Kyle do the same.
“Then I'll get a job and send you money.”
I shook my head. Matt had plenty of money and I have some from my books. I don't need Kyle's money. “If you really want to do something for me you can promise you'll never again write me cold and hurtful letters that make me feel like you don't love me anymore.”
He looked truly surprised. “I love you more than I'll ever love anyone else,” he said. “But I can't write that in a letter. I can't commit that sort of thing to writing. What if the letters were found?”
I shrugged. “I write far worse in my journal all the time.”
Kyle looked pale. “You've written about the baby in your journal? About us?”
“Don't worry, they're well hidden.” I told him where they were and he seemed reassured.
Kyle left again this morning. He promised to write more often and to try to get back here as much as he can. That's all I want, all I would ever ask of him.
May 22, 1955
I miss Matt. I cannot even write my stories, I'm so preoccupied with thoughts of him. Friends of Daddy's have finished the second story and I'm moving the bed that belonged to Matt's parents into the big bedroom that was meant for both of us.
June 12, 1955
Last night, Eden Swift Riley made her journey into the world. My labor was long (“Swift is the wrong middle name for her,” said the midwife), but hardly worth writing about now that she's here. She is beautiful and perfect, as I was certain she would be. She has white fuzz on her head and big blue eyes. She is delicate and dainty—not quite seven pounds with skin as white as sugar. Her head is nearly perfectly round, which the midwife says is a miracle, since my labor was so long. I can't wait for Kyle to see her. We had a phone put in just last week and Daddy called and left a message with the manager at Kyle's apartment house.
June 18, 1955
Kyle and Louise arrived late last night. They will stay several weeks, then join Professor Latterly in Colombia.
I was sleeping when they arrived and Kyle woke me up and sat next to me on the big bed. He took Eden on his knees and just stared into her little face.
“I can't believe it,” he said over and over again. He was smiling. We were both smiling and I thought of how long it's been since there was happiness between us. Kyle looked for all the world like a proud daddy and Eden played her role well, yawning and gurgling, looking up at him as if she knew that no matter what anyone told her from this day forward, this man was her father.
We talked a long time, like we used to. He told me he will marry Lou, that he knows he's found the right woman for him and the reason he knows that is because she reminds him of me! I thought of the skinny, cigarette-smoking woman I met in his apartment and asked him what he meant.
“Not physically,” he said. “But she's the type of person who pays no attention to the rules of society if she doesn't agree with them. She doesn't care what anyone thinks of her. She's creative, like you are, though she's an artist and dancer rather than a writer. She's not reclusive, but in other ways she's very much like you. She knows Eden is mine,” he said. “After Matt's funeral I told her everything.”
“What did she say?”
Kyle shrugged. “She wasn't the least bit shocked. She cried a little. She said I should be the best uncle I can possibly be.”
At first I wished he hadn't brought Louise with him. I didn't want to share him for these two weeks. But this morning I was sitting in the rocker on the front porch when Lou came and sat down next to me. She looks completely different to me now, although I know she actually looks the same. She had on dungarees and a black sleeveless shirt and she smoked one cigarette after another while we talked. Her face is pretty—very thin, with pointed cheekbones and round blue eyes. When she speaks, her accent is hard, but her voice soft.
“I love your brother, and he loves me,” she began. “But nobody in the world, including me, is going to take your place in his heart. If you had not been raised as brother and sister, there's no doubt in my mind that he would choose you over me or anyone else.”
I thanked her for telling me that. It was a generous thing to say, and I can see now why Kyle is in love with her. I told her I wasn't sure she was right, though. I said Kyle was always bothered by the fact that I preferred to be alone than to be out among people. I told her that my greatest fear is that I might turn Eden into a hermit as well.
Lou suggested I learn how to drive, that I buy a car with some of the money from the sale of Matt's house so I could get out more. Ha! That's quite a joke. I figure that no matter how well Kyle described me to her, she doesn't quite have the picture of me yet.
This afternoon Kyle, Lou and I walked Eden in her carriage over to the cavern. Lou was fascinated and wanted a geological description of the tites and mites, which I provided while Kyle sat on the sunlit ground outside the cave holding—and staring at—his daughter. He cannot take his eyes off her and I don't blame him.
June 23, 1955
Daddy and Susanna dislike Lou and they do not hide their feelings well. She talks about the plight of poor people (she means city poor, not like the poor we used to be) and of colored people. She speaks of Mozart and Picasso. She is too worldly for the likes of Daddy and Susanna. I enjoy listening to her though. She is not at all afraid to speak her mind.
June 24, 1955
Daddy told Kyle he'd like Lou out of the house, that she is upsetting Susanna. I think it is more Daddy that's u
pset. He's grown irritable this last year and he spends too much time with the bottle. I am afraid Kyle and Lou will leave early and I've begged Daddy not to make a fuss.
June 27, 1955
Lou asked me last night if she could hold Eden and only then did I realize she had not yet held her. I thought maybe she was just not the mothering type, but after I watched her and Kyle cooing and clucking over Eden, I realized she had just not wanted to step in too soon. She and Kyle told me they don't plan on having children because they'll be traveling too much. Watching them with Eden I knew what a loss that will be for them. It makes Eden even more important for Kyle, for both of them I guess. I'm more than willing to share her. After all, he is her father.
I'm not jealous of Lou, except sometimes when I see Kyle touch her and feel that old longing leap up inside me before I can check it. I think Kyle is very careful not to touch her around me. They are both careful not to hurt me.
June 28, 1955
We are getting indoor plumbing with some of the money from Matt's house. Luxury! Kyle is putting the rest in a special bank account for Eden to use when she's ready for college. He says she won't be a charity case like we were, thanks to Matt. Kyle and Lou are leaving on Friday for New York and Sunday for Colombia. Colombia is a painful distance from Lynch Hollow.
July 6, 1955
I can write again! For the first time since Matt died, I want to get back to the book I was working on. Eden is in her little bassinet with cotton in her teensy ears so the typing doesn't bother her too much. It's hot outside, but cool in here. I'm so grateful I have Eden. I would be very lonely without her. I want to be a good mother. Kyle gave me a camera before he left for Colombia. He doesn't want to miss out on seeing Eden grow up, and I take one picture after another of her. Daddy says I give her too much attention, I hold her too much, I'm going to spoil her. I told him that's my intention: I plan to spoil her rotten.
Secret Lives Page 32