Secrets of Eden

meal together), one of us occasionally stroking Lula behind her ears. Mom sort of beat around the bush for a few minutes, asking about school and what sorts of things Dad and I had been talking about lately when he phoned or at lunch. Then she went on this riff about how complicated adult relationships are, which would have been the absolute perfect moment for me to bring up Stephen. But I didn’t, and that will always be a regret I’ll live with, because now I’ll never know for sure what she was thinking. At any rate, I acted surprised when she said Dad was coming home, because I figured I was supposed to. Then I told her that I really didn’t think this was such a good plan and reminded her of some of the worst fights they’d had in the months before he moved out. But she said things were going to be different now because Dad was going to be different now. She said this had been a real wake-up call for him and he had learned from his mistakes-which was not unlike what my dad had said to me, too, though he’d also said he was still going to make plenty of them. (Yup, that was my dad: a real lifelong learner.)

But the thing that struck me then and I think about now is this: Mom didn’t seem all that happy about Dad coming home to live with us. She seemed resigned to the idea. It was like it was all a big chore that loomed before her. Something we both would just have to endure.

FROM A SACRED WHILE BY HEATHER LAURENT (P. 301)

Make no mistake: Although my faith in heaven is unshakable, although I am confident in the angels that reside amongst us, I am as filled with sorrows at endings as you are. I cry at the funerals for friends I have lost, I mourn for lovers with whom, in the end, I will not have the pleasure or privilege of building a life. I grieve for the parents who have outlived their children, and I will always despair for the children who have watched their own parents break the rapture of the night with violence.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

When I think of that spring, the first thing that comes to mind is how easy it all was. There had been so much tension in the house for so many years that I hadn’t realized how simple life could be if you weren’t always waiting for the boiler in the basement to explode. And I know my mom felt that way, too-probably even a ton more than I did. There was this massive late-season snowstorm on Easter, but still Mom and I trudged up the hill in our parkas and snow boots for the sunrise service at six in the morning. Obviously we didn’t expect to see the sun rise over the mountains to the east. No one did, and there were about seventy of us who made it there. (Just for the record, it was the first sunrise service I had gone to in three or four years. Usually I slept in and would stagger out of bed for the regular nine forty-five service. And the only reason I went to the sunrise service that year was for Mom.) Stephen was very funny, even though you could only hear about every other word in the gale. But about six-fifteen the wind started to slow and we could all see the sky lightening to the east. Soon there were just a few big flakes floating around, and then even they were gone. We never got actual blue sky that morning, but we could all see this great round lightbulb behind the thin shade of clouds. And that’s what it was like for me when Dad was away. This big storm I had gotten used to was gone, and while there may not have been total sunshine, I could see the light- and I knew that with a little luck even that last veil of clouds would disappear if I gave it more time. And I imagine it was even better for Mom, because she wasn’t being abused and she had this cool thing going with Stephen.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t long after that when, for whatever the reason, her affair with Stephen began winding down. And then, a little later, the flowers from Dad started coming. It was like he knew that now was the perfect time to wedge the toe of his boot back in the door.

It’s funny, but I have a childhood memory of Mom reading to me in the apartment we had lived in when I was a little girl in Bennington that I link in my mind with that spring. Mom is reading to me from Blueberries for Sal, which I still have, incidentally, and I’m curled up in her arms in this massive rocking chair that she told me once was the chair in which she liked to nurse me when I was a baby. I guess I’m, like, four. The chair went with us when we moved to Haverill. And one Sunday afternoon that spring when Dad was gone, I saw Mom sitting in that chair and reading a novel. The dust jacket had the same blues and yellows as the cover of Blueberries for Sal, and the afternoon sun was coming in through the window just the way it had that day long ago when I was curled up in her lap in Bennington. And just like that day when I was four, I felt totally at peace and totally secure. That’s what that spring had felt like when Dad was gone. And that feeling, I guess, is what my dad had taken away from me for most of my life.

BETWEEN THE FIRST days of February and the last half of May, I never saw my parents together. They had a colossal fight the Sunday night after Groundhog Day. (Looking back, Sunday might have been the night they were most likely to collide. Maybe, like me, my dad just found Sunday nights totally depressing. You know, it’s the end of the weekend and school and work are all you have to look forward to for the next five days. And even though my mom had Mondays off, it’s possible she felt those same end-of-the-weekend blahs, too, because for the rest of the world the weekend was ending.) Nearly three and a half months would pass between the fight that led Mom to get the temporary restraining order and the day I came home from school and there was Dad at the kitchen table. I was living with my mom that whole time, but by the end of March I was seeing my dad again, either in Manchester or one time at our cottage on the lake.

I’m not sure why my dad started that fight in February. Actually, I’m not sure why he started most of their fights. There was never a good reason. Usually he was drunk, but not that Sunday night. I mean, he had been drinking. That I know. But he wasn’t so drunk that he couldn’t drive. After all, he got in his car and drove away on his own when Mom told him to get out. At first he’d said there was no way he was leaving his own house. He reminded Mom that her salary at the bank sure didn’t cover the mortgages on the house or the cottage or the car payments. (I must admit, until that night I didn’t even know we had car payments. I knew we had mortgages. But I hadn’t really thought about how we might not own Dad’s BMW or Mom’s Accord outright.) But she held her ground. She had rolled up the sleeve of her sweater and her turtleneck so she could hold an ice pack on her elbow. Dad had, for reasons that probably didn’t make any sense and certainly no longer matter, pushed her down the stairs. I saw him do it. And, worse, he saw that I had witnessed it. I think we all thought he had broken her arm. He hadn’t, but despite the ice pack it would swell up like she was Popeye. She also had a bruise on her hip that was so black and blue it looked like a screen saver of outer space. I think Dad was torn when Mom told him to get out. Should he get out, like his wife was demanding, or should he take her to the hospital? Mom would say to me later that night that his big concern was his reputation. It wouldn’t look good for him if he had broken his wife’s arm pushing her down the stairs. But my mom also thought it wouldn’t have looked good for her, either. She would go to the hospital the next morning, just in case. But I don’t think she would have gone if Monday hadn’t been her day off. Still, she did get her arm and her back X-rayed. Nothing was broken. But someone at the hospital must have said something to her, because it was on the way back to Haverill that she detoured to the courthouse and got what is called a relief- from-abuse order and had the papers served to Dad before he could come home.

Dad, I assume, had thought he was just leaving for the night. And so it must have been quite the shocker when the police showed up at his little suite of offices above the toy store. I don’t know what he told his secretary or his accountant or anyone else who might have been present about why a couple of policemen were there. But I’m sure he figured out something. He was pretty fast on his feet when he was sober. And, like I said, I’m sure a lot of the world thought he had left Mom, not the other way around. He was, in many people’s eyes, a pretty solid catch.

Months and months later, Josie explained to me that the police had probably told Mom that they could arrest him, if she wanted. But she didn’t want that. She just wanted him out. She just wanted a little peace. And, maybe, she just wanted to be with Stephen.

Anyway, she never went to court when she had the chance.

JUST AS THERE were times when my dad wasn’t a total jerk to my mom, I have memories of him trying to be a pretty good dad with me. (Sometimes he even succeeded.) I used to love to visit him at his stores or that restaurant of his when I was younger. He seemed extremely important, and so that made me feel important. His employees treated me like a princess. He used to do a lot of paperwork for the restaurant at a table near the door to the kitchen, because when it was quiet, he could get work done and when it was crazy busy (which sometimes it was), he could see the whole dining room and get a sense of what worked in the restaurant and what didn’t. He