Dust of Eden

by Thomas Sullivan

  They argued in that slow, loving way that had evolved somehow. Pathos, humor. Negotiating death. The father reviving slightly with the son's attention; the son dying a little:

  If you don't care for any other reason, then care for me, Dad. You can't ask me to let you go like that.

  Why can't I?

  I'm not trying to keep you alive beyond your time. But you're healthy. You're not in any pain.

  I am in pain.

  Hey, old man, when God puts the death certificate in your hand, I'll sign off, but not a moment sooner. Maybe I'll even leave your head sticking out of the ground for a tombstone. Okay? Okay?

  Polemics. The flow was circular. Stalemate.

  "Ariel is complaining about you, Dad. You've got to cooperate, you know."

  "Who's Ariel?"

  "Woman who runs this place."

  "They're all women here."

  "Mostly. I guess that's the problem. She says you keep going in other people's rooms. She says one of the women found you asleep on her bed and that you tried to hug her. Nice goin', guy."

  Frail smile. "Some people are all about wish fulfillment."

  His father still had a sense of humor sometimes. "Yeah. Anyway, try to remember which is your room, okay? And wait for formal introductions before you hug a woman."

  "There's no woman for me except Beth," he said. "Best thing that ever happened to me."

  They were silent for a while, and Denny wished he could think of something to say, because he could feel the lucidity draining away like heat from a car left in the cold. Just to make a noise, he pulled open the nightstand drawer. Oh, shit. Three pair of glasses, only one his father's. One of the other two had Hollywood glitter frames. He lifted them out, shoved them in his pocket. Best to leave them inconspicuously around the house when he was on the way out than draw attention to senile larceny.

  "What is this place?" his father said.

  "New Eden."

  "Tell Tiffany to come in here."

  "Tiffany's not here, Dad."

  "Where'd she go?"

  "I don't know."

  "Then get your mother for me."

  "Mom's not here either, Dad."

  "Tell Tiffany to come in here."

  Denny hesitated. 'Tiffany has never been here, Dad."

  "I saw her last night."

  "Tiffany died seven years ago."

  "I saw her . . . she's getting tall for her age."

  "Dad. Tiffany was forty-seven. She died of a drug overdose. She was in bad shape."

  His father listened attentively, as if the news were freshly arrived and pummeling him, and Denny couldn't stop telling him the truth. There was no reason to dredge up his sister's miserable life and fate, but he did, because it was the truth and he couldn't spare his father the truth, couldn't let him slide into whatever merciful dementia was scattering his memories. If the memories went, what was left?

  "I saw her last night," Martin said. "My little girl. She's got her momma's green eyes."

  ". . . Yeah."

  "I don't know where she got that blonde hair and those pouty lips, though."

  "Yeah." His sister's hair was steel gray when she died. She had looked sixty on her best day. The blonde hair, the rosebud mouth, the green eyes—that was the nine-year-old before the fire in 1956. After the fire she was scars. Grafts and operations had traumatized her adolescence, leading to drugs and worse. By the time she took her last overdose in 1994, addiction and prostitution had taken their toll.

  "When is her birthday, son?"

  "November."

  "Is it November now?"

  "It's summer."

  "Oh. Remind me when it's your sister's birthday."

  "Okay."

  "And tell your mom I want to see her."

  "She's not here, Dad. She's never been here. And Tiffany's not here. She's never been here either."

  Befuddled look. "Well, then who did I see last night?"

  "I don't know."

  "She had blonde hair. She had your sister's green eyes and that pout on her mouth. Who was she, then?"

  "No one."

  The denials were like plunging a knife into his old man. Stabbing him again and again in the brain, the mind, the soul. Fragmented memories kept rescuing his father from reality, and Denny kept dragging him back to the present. He wouldn't let go. Couldn't. Because then the figure on the bed wouldn't be his father anymore.

  "—Dad. Listen to me. I know it's hard to remember, so that's why I keep repeating things and writing them down for you. And you've got your tape recorder here, remember? I made you a tape. I told you to listen to it any time you couldn't remember. It's the same tape we've had for years, but you never play it. Momma used to play it for you so that you wouldn't keep thinking you had to do your taxes."

  He didn't like the faint echo that dogged his words in the oversize tile bedroom, and he moved to the black vinyl chair by the bed.

  "You've got a common medical condition that sometimes keeps you from remembering. You're the same grouchy old guy you've always been—you're wise and you're funny—but you lose track of things because of the condition. I'm not gonna treat you like a kid, dad. I'm gonna take care of you and make you sure you don't have any pain or indignities, but I'm not gonna treat you like you're less than what you are. You're my dad. So try not to be frustrated if I keep at you, okay? Okay, Dad?"

  "Okay."

  "I'm not telling you you've got to live forever, but I don't want to lose you before you tell me the secret of why you've got more hair than I do."

  Faint nod. "You must take after your mother's side."

  "Yeah. Well, that's not all bad."

  "Send her in again, will you?"

  ". . . I can't, Dad."

  "Why not?" The look. Then slow tears welling up. Nothing else. No movement of the sagging, worn cheeks, the reddened throat. "I forgot. She's dead, isn't she?"

  "Yeah, she's dead."

  "And Tiffany . . . ?"

  "Tiffany too."

  "She was burned in the fire—I didn't save her."

  "Dad—"

  "I tried, but I couldn't."

  "You did save her, Dad."

  "She was already burned."

  "Dad."

  Sniffling now, both of them. Fighting it. Big, stupid men unable to turn the valve and let it out. Tears aching in their skulls, teeth clenched, blinking blurry-eyed at each other. Silence and irregular breathing. A rough, dry hand on top of a rougher, dryer one.

  "Hey." Denny pushing himself to his feet. "I came in here to tell you to stop groping the women."

  Martin nodded but wasn't sure the words they had spoken matched his memories. "So everyone's dead."

  "I'm not . . . you're not."

  And that's how Denny left—fleeing out of the house, avoiding everyone. Ariel Leppa with her magic camera, trying to capture his soul. The glasses still in his pocket—Stop, thief, you're robbing us blind (ha-ha)! But as he turned his Toyota Tercel in front of the house, he caught a face in an upper window, and for just a second he thought he was looking at his long-ago sister. Tiffany, before the fire. Blonde hair, green eyes, rosebud mouth. Momentary, because it backed away. Probably just the imperfections of a windowpane in a vintage farmhouse. Wavy, distorted. Fade to black.

  Chapter 5

  Why don't I paint myself younger?

  Such a temptation, and therein lay the evil. Like a cough that would inevitably become a cold, Ariel fought it. Humility—she must keep her humility. And, of course, there was the problem of the corpse. Some revitalized version of herself dragging the dead one into the woods and digging a grave. Not an appealing prospect. She couldn't paint herself out of existence, like she was sure she could do with the others, who had already gone through natural death and now existed tethered to those paintings, as if those seminal portraits were their spirit guardians. She would have to die like Amber had when her younger self came into being.

  But already Ariel had an idea of how to take care of the burial
, if she could only trust that it would work. She knew the painting had to dry before the creation was finished. And that would give her time to . . . arrange things. She could paint herself, and then she would have an interval before there were two of her—one dead, one alive. And in that interval she could go out into the woods and dig her grave and lie down in it, and wait for the second Ariel to come finish the job. She wouldn't have to drag the body, dig the grave or trundle the cadaver in. She would just have to fill the damn thing. Shovel dirt in a hole. Not so bad. She wouldn't even look down in the hole at herself—black clods raining over her face. She wouldn't have to see that. You could sling dirt without looking. Hard to miss a hole.

  But what if she didn't remember what had happened from her previous life? Amber didn't. When the portrait completely dried and she drew her first breath, the new Ariel wouldn't know that her former self had simultaneously expired and was lying in an open grave out in the woods. What then? But she would remember. The two Ambers had been separated by thirty-five years, that was all. The child and the adult. Vastly different beings. No wonder the child didn't remember. More likely she didn't understand and couldn't interpret an adult version of herself beyond her nine years. So in that respect, Ariel would be like the ones who had died naturally, she thought. They remembered their previous deaths—remembered past them, in fact—even though they wouldn't tell her what it was like in their graves. And Ariel could write a journal about all that had happened in the last year, just to make sure her reborn self would know.

  The power she had was still dawning on her a year after that first painting. She had resurrected the major players from her past, because they had died, but there were others who had died that she had thought about bringing back. Like her parents. She didn't remember her father—didn't have his picture—but her mother, well, Ariel was still thinking about that. Did she want to compete with her and deal with issues of control that she could take for granted with the others? Did she want to have absolute power over her own mother? And her mother had died younger than Ariel was now. If she brought her back younger than herself, what then? No, she didn't think she would be resurrecting her mother. Rest in peace.

  There was so much more to learn, and she had barely begun to experiment. The subjects wore the clothes she painted on them and came to life in the settings she chose. She always re-created them in the studio—that was the birthing chamber—but she could have recreated them anywhere, she thought. She had been extremely careful to let it happen just the way it had the first time when Amber's voice woke her up. In fact, she never watched. She left the studio and listened for the sudden steps or the tremulous cry, and then she presented herself, and the person knew instantly who it was that had brought them back. Ariel saw it in their eyes—a complex look she was still deciphering because of the glints of cunning and fear and pleading. She had brought them back from the grave, and they knew already that she had the power of life and death over them.

  It was the clothes that made her understand she could paint inorganic things into existence as well as organic – that the power in the paint was creation per se. So she had made things happen in the fields and repaired the barn too. Should she paint chickens and cows and sell them, she wondered with a flicker of amusement. Should she paint vegetable gardens already grown and flowers in bloom?

  But for some reason the thought of painting nonhuman subjects spooked her, and so now, except for rudimentary needs, supplies and repairs, she was very cautious about creating mere lifeless things. As if this might be tampering with unknown consequences — deus ex machina. So she still drove to the local strip mall once a week.

  People were the substance of her life, not things. She knew people. This was her sphere of injustice to set right. A very small sphere. She wouldn't, for instance, paint back JFK. But she could, if she wanted, she thought. She could change history; she could solve a lot of problems or, perhaps, create unforeseen cataclysms. But . . .

  Why don't I paint myself younger?

  That night she went so far as to make a charcoal sketch on canvas of how she might look. Melting the flesh that sagged at her throat, tightening the corners of her eyes, softening the discolorations where her skull was starting to thrust through her cheeks and the bridge of her nose. She had a foolish urge to carry the sketch downstairs and stick it under a certain someone's nose—

  "Is this better, Kraft? Do I make it to the top of your list if I look like this?"

  But she had to recognize that the inertness of his feelings for her had been conditioned over a lifetime. Still, he was a docile old man now, confused and lost. He would never be more susceptible than he was now. She should talk to him plainly, try to reprogram him, and if his mind could be purged of all the old reflexes and negative associations, then maybe she would see about painting them both younger.

  Leaning the sketch of herself against the studio wall, like a number painting waiting to be filled in, and resisting the impulse to check her appearance in the mirror, she negotiated the house to the room of the man she still loved.

  The suave Kraft Olson of yesteryear might have risen smiling when she entered, but this one lowered his chin slightly, like a cornered animal protecting its throat. She wondered if he would have made that protective little nod if Danielle Kramer had come in.

  "Hello, Kraft," she said very softly.

  "Hello."

  "Do you remember my name?"

  "No."

  "Molly says you remember lots of things." He was sitting in the chair, and it annoyed her to see his wonderful eyes go dull and flat in the lamp light. "If you really don't remember anything, then I suppose it won't matter what I say now, because you won't remember that either."

  She dragged a bentwood chair slowly across the linoleum and sat knee-to-knee with him, and when she had his slightly askance gaze locked in, she took a long shaky breath.

  "We've known each other for over half a century, Kraft, and I've felt the same about you the whole time. There is no one else in your whole life who can say that."

  He could have been watching paint dry, for all the effect her confession had.

  "You know, I've still got the Valentine card Mrs. Dulmeir made you give me in fifth grade," she said. "Do you remember that? Everyone had to give everyone else one of those little heart-shaped Valentines she brought in, and you tore mine up in front of the boys after school. You were very good at throwing cold water on me, Kraft. You tore my heart up, but I kept yours. . . ."

  She smiled a melancholy smile, while he maintained the barely tolerant look of a dog sitting in a tub of water.

  ". . . So you see where we are, my dear Kraft. Of all your Valentines, I'm the sole survivor. In fact, you owe your very existence to me. I think maybe you know that. I think you remember just like the others that you were once dead. And if you don't, then I'm telling you: I brought you back. Not that I had any illusions."

  She had to assume he understood her and recognized the truth about their miraculous existence. Yes, he must have, because otherwise he would think her completely insane for saying what she was saying, and surely she would be able to detect that in his eyes.

  "You could decide to love me, Kraft. You could work at it. I brought you back. I can make us both younger. Was I so bad before? I was devoted to you. I gave you my loyalty. Give me yours. Well? Talk to me. How am I doing?"

  Horribly.

  She had emasculated him, then demanded that he want her. The stone lioness of ultimate justice crouched inside her on the verge of making a thinly veiled ultimatum. But at last she took a deep breath and said, "Think about it, Kraft."

  Well, that took care of that, she thought, making her way slowly upstairs with frequent pauses to slide her hand up the banister. So what now? A complete personal makeover with miracle paint? It was too late for humility, but it was absurd to go through with the portrait. The others in the house would laugh behind her back. Ariel Leppa's desperate attempt to turn herself into a slightly overripe centerfold. Wha
t was her purpose anyway—to change the returnees to her life or to be changed by them?

  And then she switched on the studio light, and it looked almost the same.

  Almost.

  But the paintings stacked one behind another were not lined up precisely as before, and the sketch she had just done of herself leaned at a different angle against the wall. She hadn't locked the door because she had thought everyone was asleep. Clearly someone had been waiting their chance.

  Slowly she circled the studio. The dampness that had sprung to her eyes as she left Kraft's room glazed to ice as it came to rest on the glass jars. Something she saw there made her insides begin to shear off. She would never have left them staggered like that. The containers that held her paints had been disturbed.

  A thin cuticle of red rose to the lip of one glass jar as if some of it had been poured out. Slowly she unscrewed the cap and peered inside. It was almost empty. Just the coated sides gave the illusion of a full jar. Not seeing red began to make her see red.

  Who?

  The red itself was a clue. Like makeup. Like the blush of youth. Ruta, she thought.

  She stooped over the stacked paintings, flipping them like file folders until her long fingers found Ruta's portrait and yanked it out. Back to the bench she took it, scrutinizing every brush stroke, tilting the canvas to let light expose any fresh paint. But there were no touch-ups.

  Who, then? Molly? For the child with cystic fibrosis?

  Molly had no artistic ability whatsoever. But maybe the game was to steal a little at a time – one color – hoping it wouldn't be missed, and then when a full palette was possessed, the thief would take it to another artist.

  Something flared hotly inside Ariel, something she hadn't known was smoldering there. (Thou shalt have no other artists before me!) So now she would have to make a change. Root it out, Ruta out. Or Molly, if it was she. Sad to have to make a display of punishment and fear, but someone was challenging her, defying her! The first sin had been committed in New Eden, the first blasphemy.