The Trouble with Eden

by Lawrence Block

  She thought for a moment. “Not a girl-woman, certainly. Just a girl, I’m afraid. What’s Karen like?”

  “You’ll have to meet her sometime, and then I can ask you the same question. I’ve been spending my time trying to learn the answer myself. It’s—what did I call it before? An exhilarating experience. Very enjoyable, but also something of a challenge in a way. Oh, here’s Robert. I almost didn’t recognize you with that mustache, Robert.”

  “I’m not sure if I’ll keep it or not, sir.”

  “Well, you want to give it a chance before you decide. Did you want to order, Linda?”

  “Yes, I’m starved.”

  It was an exhilarating experience, getting to know an eighteen-year-old girl-woman who happened to be your daughter. It was exhilarating and it was a challenge. You could not pretend that she was not your daughter because there were ghosts in every room that held the two of you. You had seen her in the nurse’s arms before they had a chance to clean her up, still filthy with the detritus of the delivery, and that ghost was present along with the ghosts of all the other vivid moments of the twelve years she had lived under your roof.

  Of course she had shocked him. A dropout in her first year of college, living with a man, not even a man but several men. She had smoked marijuana; she had probably tried other drugs she had not told him about. She had become pregnant, perhaps without knowing who the father was, and had made the question of paternity academic by obtaining an abortion.

  (“One piece of advice,” he told her. “How much or how little you tell your mother is between the two of you, but if you have any sense you won’t tell her about the abortion. She may have left the Church when she was younger than you are now, but parts of her are more Catholic than you may realize.” She said it hadn’t kept her mother from divorcing him. “No, but it once kept her from getting an abortion. No, not you, for God’s sake. No child was ever more desired than you. But she became pregnant when you were ten or eleven, and the turn our marriage had taken, a new baby was the worst possible idea. She had a miscarriage and did everything but light candles in gratitude, but that was already after she had ruled out getting an abortion. So don’t say anything to her, will you?” She said, “Oh, hell, she still thinks I’m a virgin.”)

  She had shocked him with the first revelations and she shocked him intermittently thereafter, not with new facts but as he increasingly discovered her as a person. It was not that she was a shocking person. Had she been the daughter of a friend he would have found wholly admirable the very aspects that kept disconcerting him now.

  And he had to suppress this shock. It was not only that he keep it hidden from her. He had to do more than that; he had to educate himself to avoid seeing her in a harsher light because of what she was to him. Oh, it was a challenge. Here he was with a woman a quarter of a century his junior, and of course there was nothing wrong with him dating a woman that age and nothing wrong with Linda for going out with him. But if his daughter went out with a man as much older than herself as he was than Linda, he doubted he could view it with equanimity. There was nothing necessarily objectionable about a relationship between a girl of eighteen and a man of forty-three. He had picked up a stenographer at his publisher’s office when he was several years older than forty-three, and the stenographer had celebrated her nineteenth birthday less than a month before.

  They had both been aware of the age difference, it would have been impossible not to be, but it never occurred to them that it made it wrong for them to have dinner together. He had thought no less of her for dating him. Later that evening he went to her apartment and spent the night with her. They had both enjoyed themselves immensely, and he had in no way considered her foolish or immoral for having casual sex with a man his age. Their relationship never went any further because neither of them had wanted more from it than a night of good company and good sex. But neither thought of it as exploitative or unsound for what it was. He could not judge Karen by a harsher standard than he had judged the girl. More accurately, he could not presume to judge Karen—any more than he made that presumption with others. Intellectually he accepted everything about her as normal, even specifically desirable ; for a girl her age. It was better for such a girl to have healthy sexual experience than to remain a virgin, better to try marijuana than not, better to drop out of a deadening college situation than to hang in and grimly play the game. These were positions he had taken years ago, and he was certainly not going to repudiate them now that his daughter was old enough to live out what he had endorsed in theory. Inconsistency had always irritated him, and it was never more irritating than when he recognized it in himself.

  She moved into his house with the understanding that each of them was a free agent. They told each other this and joked about it. Yet neither entirely believed it. Throughout the first week she kept testing the waters, dropping elaborately casual remarks and darting sharp glances his way, looking for a reaction. He, too, was looking for a reaction; his role in the game seemed to be one of catching and squelching it before she was aware of it.

  She said “fuck” a lot. The first time she used the word he was amused at his own sudden prudery, though he doubted it showed. He tried to think of anyone he had known well in the past five years who did not use the word for emphasis. Women he met at Manhattan business lunches always seemed to make a definite point of fitting the word into the first five minutes of conversation, as if it put them on an equal footing, established them as hip and tough and gutsy and to be taken seriously. There had been an undeniable revolution in speech patterns, he knew, and what it amounted to was the whole country was talking as enlisted men had talked during his days in the service. You said “fuck” a lot in the service, he remembered; you used the word as punctuation: So this fucking guy, he was walking down the fucking street, when he fucking runs into this broad—

  He fed the word, and others, right back to her. In the beginning his speech was as artificial as her own, but within a week they had accomplished something; they were both talking in front of each other as they would have talked were they not father and daughter but merely friends.

  The candor took a variety of forms. She went out with an apprentice from the Playhouse and told Hugh not to wait up for her—“because I might spend the night.” He told her to feel free. He was reading in the living room when she returned a few minutes after one. “He wanted to ball me,” she reported, “but I didn’t really relate to him that way, and I figured I had the right to feel free not to as far as that goes.”

  Over coffee Linda said, “That’s the best meal since I came here.”

  “It’s probably the first meal you’ve had in New Hope. The first decent one.”

  “In a restaurant, yes.”

  “You’re a good cook?”

  “I’m not terrible. Why does that surprise you?”

  “It doesn’t, really. I think I’m going to have a brandy. Would you like one?”

  “Yes, I would.”

  “One thing I can’t get used to is the fact that the kids don’t drink. I can’t conceive of, the college experience untempered by tidal waves of draft beer.”

  “You went to Penn.”

  “Wharton. Not entirely the same thing.”

  “No, so I hear. That’s an unusual background for a writer, isn’t it? A business school?”

  “It was a logical background for a stockbroker. Which seemed like a logical profession. It’s funny. I can’t remember the person I was in college. I remember what that person did but I can’t remember being that person.”

  “It changed everything, didn’t it? The war.”

  “Yes. it did.”

  She was holding her brandy glass and looking off over his shoulder. She said, “I wonder if it takes something that dramatic or if small things can do it. Changing a person’s life completely so that you can point to one moment and know that you were a different person ever after.”

  He reached for his pipe, changed his mind and got a cigarett
e. She took one and he lit them both.

  She said, “Before, you were saying that it was odd talking with me about Karen, because I was closer to her in age than I am to you. But that’s not so. The numbers don’t mean anything. It’s a question of identity. It may be a function of age but you don’t measure it in years.”

  “It’s what you’ve been through.”

  “No, it isn’t. I almost said that but it’s not it. She’s been through pregnancy and an abortion and I haven’t been through either. I’ve been through a marriage but that didn’t make any difference. It made a difference but not the difference I’m talking about. It may be what you go through that does it, but what makes the difference is who you are.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “I’m not saying this well because I’m working it out as I go. Karen’s your daughter.”

  “So?”

  “No, that wasn’t preamble. It was definition. Karen’s your daughter, that’s who she is. In terms of identity. In those terms I’m not my father’s daughter or my mother’s daughter. I’m me. I’m not anybody’s daughter. And I was for a long time. Through a marriage and afterward.”

  “Were you very close to your parents?”

  “We were never close. I don’t think it has anything to do with closeness. It’s involved with perception. You stop being a child when you stop being somebody’s child.”

  “And become an adult.”

  “I guess that’s the word for it. It’s like joining a club, isn’t it?”

  “The membership requirements aren’t very strict.”

  “But the dues are high,” she said. She stubbed out her cigarette. “And you keep on paying them, don’t you? I hadn’t known that. I thought you could buy life membership, but it doesn’t work that way.”

  He remembered the girl she had been when he first asked her out. That had been little more than a week ago and yet she seemed to have changed in a fundamental way.

  It was not just her mood that had changed. He had met her on Wednesday and asked her out on Thursday, and after she turned him down he found it impossible to shrug it off. Over breakfast Friday he recounted the incident to Karen and they laughed about it. She had wanted to know if he intended to pursue the girl. He had said he didn’t think he would bother.

  Friday he walked past the mall but kept himself from going in. Saturday and Sunday he carefully avoided going to town, and Monday he drove in purposely to see her and the store was closed, all the stores were closed. He returned Tuesday late in the afternoon. He had the scene already blocked in in his mind: He would visit the shop and they would talk, and he would leave without attempting to date her. Then he would return Thursday or Friday and perhaps she would have coffee with him. If not he would ask her one more time the following week, and if she turned him down then he would say the hell with her.

  So he walked into the Lemon Tree Tuesday and she greeted him with a huge smile and came out from behind the counter. “No business at all today,” she said. “How would you like to buy me that cup of coffee give me an excuse to take a break?”

  A cup of coffee Tuesday, with effortless conversation as an accompaniment. Thursday he dropped over to the shop at six and had the uncanny feeling that she had postponed her break and expected him. They had coffee and sandwiches and he asked her to dinner Saturday night. “I’d like that very much,” she said.

  Something had happened to change her mind. One day she had decided to discourage him and a few days later she did precisely the reverse.

  Without intending to he said, “How come you’re here?”

  “You invited me.”

  “I know.”

  “How come I accepted? I ought to invent something plausible but I can’t think of anything offhand.”

  “Then let me withdraw the question.”

  “Oh, I’ll answer it, if you’ll let me be cryptic. I’ve been in the stages of something, and it seems to nave run its course. Or part of its course.”

  “That’s cryptic, all right.”

  “I decided you were safe. Unthreatening. Easy to handle. Like that better?”

  “Bitch.”

  “More of a bitch than I ever knew. You seem to bring out the bitch in me, and I don’t know if that’s good or bad. Could we go, do you think?”

  He raised a hand for the check.

  He drove slowly, disliking the feel of the heavy car. He was driving the Buick. For the past half year he had barely driven it enough to keep the battery charged, but Karen preferred the VW so he had used the Buick since her arrival. He pulled into the driveway. The lights were on in Mrs. Kleinschmidt’s quarters over the garage. He pressed a button on the dashboard and the garage door swung up and back.

  He stopped the car in front of the garage. She asked him what was the matter.

  “The Volks is gone,” he said. “That means Karen’s out”

  “I thought you were busy not playing the heavy father?”

  “That’s not the point. I brought you here to meet her.”

  “And now it looks like a setup to get me to your lair.”

  “Doesn’t it?”

  “That’s exactly what it looks like, except I saw your face when the car wasn’t in the garage, and you couldn’t have faked such a complete look of where-do-we-go-from-here? without acting lessons.”

  “Where do we go from here?”

  “Can I say I’d like to see your house without dragging myself into your lair? I’d like to see your house.”

  He showed her the house. In the office she gestured toward the desk. “Does anyone ever get to read novels in progress? Or do I have to wait until it comes out?”

  “You have to wait until it’s finished.”

  “Nobody gets to read it until it’s finished?”

  “Anita used to. My wife. Ex-wife. At the beginning I almost forced her to. She was very helpful then; she saw weaknesses that I wasn’t aware of. But then she kept on like that and in the meantime I had learned more about the craft of writing, and I knew more than she did. So she would offer criticism and it drove me crazy. Ultimately she learned to keep her mouth shut. Now nobody reads the stuff until it’s done.”

  “Even if they promised to keep their mouth shut?”

  “Even then. A book sort of grows, and it has to belong to its author until it’s done.”

  “And then it’s nobody’s child anymore and it can join the club.”

  “You know, that’s out of left field but it makes a certain amount of sense. Would you like to hear some music? What would you like to hear?”

  They listened to music but did more talking than listening. It was a relaxing and comfortable evening but he was not relaxed and did not know why. After three records had played he got up to turn the stack over. When he returned she was on her feet, and before he knew what was happening she was in his arms and he was kissing her.

  The kiss was long and thorough. When it ended she stepped back and let out her breath. He extended his arms for her, but she shook, her head so decisively his arms dropped at once to his sides.

  “I really am a bitch, aren’t I? I’m sorry, Hugh, I really am. Would you take me home now?”

  “If you want me to.”

  “What I want—never mind. Yes, please take me home.”

  They drove all the way in silence. He worked out conversational openers in his head, a great variety of them, but none of them seemed worthwhile. As he pulled up in front of the Shithouse she said, “I owe you an explanation.”

  “Nobody ever owes anybody an explanation.”

  “I wanted to find out if we had anything for each other. No. I knew we did but I wanted to prove it to myself. And I did, and then I also knew that I didn’t want to do anything about it. Yet.”

  “You’re not a bitch, but if you were—”

  “—I’d be a good one. I know. I certainly don’t want to be a cockteaser.”

  “I can’t remember the last time I heard that word.”

  “I can’t remember t
he last time I used it. If I ever did. I don’t think I ever did. Hell. All of a sudden I wanted to be home.”

  “You’re here.”

  “Yes.” She opened the car door but made no move to get out of it. “Maybe it’s that I’d like to have my clothes on the first time I meet your daughter. What’s so funny?”

  “On my way out she said she’d look forward to meeting you at breakfast tomorrow.”

  “She said that? I’m sorry to disappoint her. And to disappoint you. But I have the feeling that you didn’t particularly want to go to bed with me tonight, did you?”

  “Of course I did.”

  “But not overwhelmingly. Oh, forget it, I’m not making any sense. I enjoyed myself, Hugh. Thank you.”

  “When will I see you?”

  “Are you sure you want to? I don’t know. I’m really impossible, aren’t I? Give me a couple of days.”

  “All right.”

  He drove home trying to decide whether he was pleased or disappointed with the way the evening had

  Somewhere in the course of it he had lost control of the situation, if he could ever have been said to have been in control.

  She had wanted him physically, and that was good. And he was getting to know her and sensed that she would take a great deal of knowing. It was more important to know her than to make love to her, although the two did go hand in hand to a degree. She was right—his interest in her was not that specifically sexual. Had she not attracted him sexually he would never have thought to want to know her. That was at the bottom of it, it was always at the bottom of it, but here it played a secondary role. She had told him she was afraid of involvement, and now, despite the obscure changes she seemed to have undergone, she still seemed hesitant.

  He was ready to get involved and wondered how much of this was attributable to the girl, this particular girl. She seemed very right. Yet he knew himself rather well and for long had subjected himself to motivational probing and analysis not unlike that he leveled upon the characters in his books. He had been looking for someone. He had not known it then, but he had been looking for someone.

  Back in his living room he made himself a fresh drink and picked up a half-finished detective story. Around three he realized he had been waiting for Karen to come home. He closed the book, annoyed with himself, and went upstairs. The stairs seemed steeper than they had for the past week. He was a long time falling asleep and did not sleep well.