The Legacy of Eden

In the half gray of a reminiscent twilight they stand there, waiting for me to allow them to be remembered. I can see them begin to open their mouths and flood me with their explanations, their whys and wherefores. They want forgiveness just as much as I do and they long for it now more than ever.

But who should start? Who needs it more? And then she disengages herself from them, her form hardening from mere silhouette to actual shape. In a swathe of green she steps forward, out of time and dreams—a ghost who has walked the earth of my memory so many times, the ground is worn underfoot.

What’s hard is not starting at the beginning but trying to decide where the beginning is.

If my grandmother had to choose, for her the beginning of our story would be in May of 1946. We would find ourselves at a church fair with its fairly standard gathering of paper plates, white balloons tied to the end of red checked tables and the food is potluck.

Father Michael Banville stands before a bowl of salad and dressing, chatting amiably with Mrs. Howther about the state of her geraniums. To the left of him stands a small knot of farmers’ wives chewing over the latest town news between mouthfuls of sweet potato pie, and farther on from them, dressed in a loose flower shift, her auburn hair bobbed to curl against her shoulders, stands a tall woman putting the finishing touches to her layer cake. She had brought the icing in a tube that had been wrapped in wet tissue and kept in her handbag throughout the service in the small white church.

Every time someone passes and catches her eye she makes the same apologies about some problem with her oven the night before and how she had to run down to her uncle’s home to finish off the cake before the service, so she has had no chance to do the icing until now. People have nodded at these comments, even offered a smattering of sympathy, but mostly they have moved away wondering why on earth she would have persisted with something that circumstance was so set against. Why not bring a salad instead, or something simple? But no, they guessed correctly, she had to prove something. That was Anne-Marie Parks all over, they all thought.

The potluck was a rowdier affair than usual. Enclosed by a series of collapsible tables with honey-colored deck chairs, the gathering on the small knot of green at the church entrance added a season of color to the otherwise mundane scenery of white building and sky. It was the first one held in the town since the end of the war. Soldiers still dressed in their GI uniforms bore the weight of the grateful wives holding on to them, as they attempted to play with babies who did not know them. People mingled, smiled, and there was even a gramophone propped up on a stack of magazines on a chair. Everyone chatted as they ate and swayed along to the music, all of which Anne-Marie Parks ignored as she continued to ice her cake.

Across from her, standing next to a dish of chicken legs, her husband, Dr. Lou Parks, a tall man with long hands, stood balancing a plate of coleslaw and ham as he tried to pretend that he could not see what his wife was doing. His companion, Joe Lakes, a local farmer, did the same and therefore most of the talking. He chatted about his produce, his animals, his work, anything to keep the talk away from the subject of wives and home. It was this kindness that made him bring up a subject of gossip he would never usually raise, but as he saw Anne-Marie use the flat of a spatula to swipe away a piece of icing that did not suit her, he grasped at the last piece of news he could find that might keep them going until the silly woman had finished.

“You know they say Walter’s boy is coming home?”

“Hmm?” At this, Lou Parks raised his face from his plate and fixed his graying eyebrows into half moons of surprise.

“Don’t know for sure though, of course. But there’s been a lot of talk. Walter’s been laid up a while and Leo’s been manning things alone on the place for so long now, but they say Walter’s been getting worse.”

Lou Parks kept his features stiff as he watched Joe scan his face for confirmation.

“How’d he hear?” he said at last.

“Telegram. Old Florence said how Leo sent a message by the wireless a few weeks back. She won’t say what it was or nothing and there weren’t no name as such, but she said the reply come back all the same and though she didn’t know what it was exactly, Leo opened it then and there in the office—he couldn’t wait. She couldn’t think what else could be so urgent.”

“That’s not much evidence to suggest it was about his brother,” Lou persisted as he swallowed another forkful of ham.

“No, no … true, but Mac at the hardware store said how their sister Piper had come down to get some more linen and stuff. Good kind, too. And when he’d asked her about it she’d sniffed and said they may be expecting visitors.”

“Could be just that,” said Lou.

“Nah, everybody knows Walter don’t know nobody outta town. Whole family what’s alive and they talk to is right here—all except his boy.”

Lou was chewing thoughtfully when he caught a glimpse of his wife slicing away a piece of cake for the minister. The layer cake was all white now, with small red rosebuds lining the corners and forming a heart of sugar flowers in the center. He saw the minister pick up the fat piece in his fingers and his head nodded in silent agreement with whatever he was thinking as he devoured it.

“Very nice, Mrs. Parks,” he said as he strode away licking his thumb thoughtfully. “Very nice.”

A shadow of something passed over Anne-Marie’s face. What, he could not tell, and then she picked up her icing and the tissue and pulled off her apron before leaving the cake. She did not take a slice for herself, or for her husband.

“I haven’t seen that man in a long, long time,” said Joe wistfully. Lou stared after Anne-Marie as she wove her way through the crowds, which parted for her, though not one person looked at her or interrupted their speech to address her. Lou’s jaw slowed to a stop. Quickly he turned back to his companion.

“So how’s your knee, Joe? I noticed you seem steadier than you were last week.”

“Mmm-hmm” said Joe, looking over his shoulder.

“Another piece of ham, Joe?” asked Lou, setting his fork down and reaching to cut a slice.

“Hmm? Oh, yes, thank you.”

“No trouble,” said Lou, heaping the plate high and then Joe pulled up a chair and began to sit down. Relieved, Lou settled himself beside him and took in another mouthful of coleslaw as they silently and methodically began to eat.

Later that night, as he waited in bed while she finished up in their bathroom, Lou thought back to the church fair. He thought of the cake and the delicate rosebuds, of the look on his wife’s face as she had stared at the minister who, blissfully ignorant, had greedily relished the slice she had cut him with only the barest of acknowledgment. She had lost herself for the rest of the afternoon, until finally she had slipped an arm around his waist just as he was thinking he would like to leave. They had passed the table with the cake as they walked to their car and he had noted that it was still as she had left it with only one slice taken away.

He wanted to tell her his thoughts: to say them and wait for her response so that maybe then he would fully understand the meaning behind what he had seen, but as ever when she stepped into the room, her body pale beneath the white cotton nightdress and her hair crowding her shoulders in waves tinged with red, he opened his mouth and the words seemed to fail him. Instead of voicing all these thoughts he said, “You know there’s talk that Cal Hathaway may be coming home.”

“Who?” his wife asked.

“Walter’s boy.”

“Oh. Why does that matter?”

He turned to face the ceiling. “No reason, I guess.” He shifted so that his back faced her when she slipped in beside him. “Just nice for Walter to have his family back.”

“What did you say his name was?” she asked.

“Abraham technically, ‘cept almost everyone calls him Cal.”

“Why’s that?”

“It’s his middle name.”

“Like me,” she said quietly.

“I like Anne-Marie,” her husband said, an unexpected tenderness suddenly tugging at him. He waited for her to say something else, but she didn’t and so he untensed himself and settled down to sleep.

Outside, crickets chirped before the milk of a half moon and Anne-Marie Parks heard them well until the early hours of the morning when she finally fell asleep. She did not think about what her husband had told her; there was no immediate reason why it should be relevant to her. She did not know that she would later marry the man whose name she had so casually forgotten as she lay hugging her pillow, waiting for sleep to come. Nor everything else that would come to her: things she stayed awake aching for, night after night, until she woke beside her husband, hating the rise and fall of his back because that, and not what she had dreamt of, was her reality. She was so unaware of what lay in store, of what she was capable, or who she really was.

This was all when she was still just Anne-Marie Parks, the local doctor’s wife; seven months, four days and ten hours away from becoming Lavinia Hathaway.

When Abraham Caledon Hathaway finally returned home, it was to find his father dying. The man who had once wrestled him down and cast his belt on his back at sixteen after he had stolen the family truck and gone drinking, had withered to a husk and now lay in blue-striped pajamas on white linen sheets.

Cal had stood in the doorway of his childhood home contemplating how close his father looked to death. He was not horrified by this. He had met death already over a year ago. His wife had been decapitated in a car accident while he was out at work as a salesman. A truck with a load of metal ladders had slammed on its brakes at a red light, but the ladders had not been properly tethered to the back. At the force of the stop, one of them had dislodged and shot straight through the windshield of his wife’s car and smashed into the base of her head at the neck. Their three-year-old daughter, Julia, had been in the passenger seat next to her at the time, although miraculously she was unhurt. Cal had picked her up at the hospital after he had identified his wife. Her skin and cherry-patterned dress were still covered in her mother’s blood. He stared into the calm brown eyes of his child and had known then and there what death really was, and also, that at the tender age of three, she now knew it, too.

That was why he let her come upstairs with him to see his father when they first arrived at the house, even though his sister, Piper, had protested.

“It ain’t right,” she had called after them both from the bottom of the stairway.

“What isn’t?” their brother Leo had asked, coming in to take the lunch she had laid out for him on the kitchen table.

Piper turned. “He’s taking Julia up to see Pa.”

Her brother had humphed as he tore into a cold beef sandwich with mustard. “So they’ve arrived, have they? Anyway what do you care? It’s his kid.”

“Would you let yours come up?”

“I don’t have none so I wouldn’t know. Anyway, I’m thinking that’d be more along the lines of their mother’s call. She don’t have no mother.”