Eden

First Mariner Books edition 2019

Copyright © 2018 by Andrea Kleine

Reading Group Guide copyright © 2019 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company"

All rights reserved

For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to [email protected] or to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 3 Park Avenue, 19th Floor, New York, New York 10016.

hmhbooks.com

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Kleine, Andrea, 1970– author.

Title: Eden / Andrea Kleine.

Description: Boston : Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2018.

Identifiers: LCCN 2017045484 (print) | LCCN 2017051671 (ebook) | ISBN 9781328884541 (ebook) | ISBN 9781328884084 (hardcover)

Subjects: LCSH: Life change events—Fiction. | Sisters—Fiction. | BISAC:FICTION / Literary. | FICTION / Family Life. | FICTION / Suspense. | FAMILY & RELATIONSHIPS/ Siblings.

Classification: LCC PS3611.L454 (ebook) | LCC PS3611.L454 E34 2018 (print) |DDC 813/.6—dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017045484

Cover design by Georgia A. Feldman

Cover photograph © Christian Adams/Getty Images

Author photograph © Sylvie Rosokoff

v2.0619

for my friends

1

It was embarrassing to take the bus, but it was doubly embarrassing to hand the driver a coupon that had been cut out of the back of a Cheerios box. My father ate Cheerios for breakfast every day except Sundays, and then he ate eggs. When my parents divorced, back when I was ten, my father moved from Charlottesville out to the country, sort of toward DC but sort of toward the mountains, and fixed up an old house. My sister, Eden, and I took the Greyhound bus to visit him every other weekend because neither our father nor my mother was willing to make the ninety-minute drive each way. My mother insisted it was our father’s responsibility. Our father thought he was paying my mother more than enough for child support, considering she had a decent job and he never had to pay Eden’s mom, Suriya, anything. He tried to bargain with my mother to drop us off at a shopping mall halfway, but she refused. He drove us the first year and a half until he spotted the bus coupons on the back of the Cheerios box, and then he never picked us up or drove us home again.

Eden always let me give the tickets to the bus driver. I was excited at first that she let me do it, since she was two years older, but when I realized I had been duped into having the uncool job, she said, No givebacks. I had to go on the bus first and hand over the tickets, and Eden could wait and lag behind, distancing herself from me and the embarrassing Cheerios coupon. Her preferred seating arrangement was to have her own two seats and she would sit wherever she wanted, forcing me to move closer to her if she sat too far away. If I tried to sit down next to her, she would say, "Hope not, which was her way of politely saying Fuck off," since my name is Hope.

The bus station was next to a dentist’s office in a small strip mall of only four shops and a Jack in the Box that had been closed since our dad moved to his small town. If our dad wasn’t there to pick us up, Eden and I would wait inside the station on the single row of connected plastic chairs and read or do homework until he showed up in his old VW bus, which we called The Camper. When my parents divorced, my mom got the car and our dad got The Camper.

One Friday, when I was in my first semester of high school, our dad was late. I got tired of trying to do my Algebra homework. Eden put on her headphones and popped a mixtape in her Walkman and ignored me when I asked for help, even though she was taking Trig and was good at it. We stared at the television bolted to the ceiling and watched as the programs segued from news to game shows to a really dumb movie to news again. The parking lot had grown dark and we couldn’t see anything out of the windows except our own muddy reflection. We were the only ones in the station and other buses had already come and gone. The guy behind the counter asked, You girls need to call someone? and Eden quickly replied, No. The ticket agent sighed, like he was just trying to be a nice person and why did Eden have to be so unfriendly in return. He hit a button on his cash register and printed out the long receipt of the day. A few minutes later he said he had to close up the station for the night. You girls are going to have to wait outside, he said, obviously somewhat uncomfortable with the situation but not wanting to get involved with us any further. There’s a pay phone over there if you need to call someone, he said, pointing to a post at the opposite end of the strip mall. Eden and I sat on the curb outside the station and watched him drive away.

Eden lit up a clove cigarette. I liked the way they smelled, so I didn’t pester her that she shouldn’t smoke.

Why didn’t you want to call? I asked.

Because I didn’t, Eden said. She dug her Walkman out of the pocket of her trench coat and flipped over the cassette.

If we had called, Dad would’ve been here by now, I said.

No, he wouldn’t have answered because he’s either on his way or his car broke down.

What are we supposed to do if his car broke down?

I don’t fucking know, she said.

Maybe he got the weekends mixed up and he doesn’t know to come and get us.

Then he’s really fucked up. She put on her headphones and pressed PLAY and I was cut out. She was done with me.

Finally, headlights turned into the parking lot and swept over us. Eden half hid her cigarette behind her hip and pulled off her headphones. A pickup truck drove up next to the bus station and a skinny guy in jeans got out. Hey, he said. Sorry you girls had to wait so long. I’m Larry. I’m a friend of your dad’s. He had some serious car trouble so he asked me to come get you.

The whole thing played out like the script they read you in school about how you shouldn’t get into a stranger’s car, even if he offers you ice cream, even if he says he’s a friend of your dad’s. Larry probably sensed this, because he said, I met you before, but you were really little. You probably don’t remember. It was at a birthday party for you—he pointed at Eden—when you were three or four maybe. You were just a baby, he said to me.

We stared at him, unsure of what to say. Eden was usually the one to take charge in these situations, but she was silent. Eden thought that once you were over sixteen you were basically an adult, and she didn’t like being reminded that she had ever been a little girl. She flicked away her cigarette and crossed her arms over her chest. Larry leaned back against the truck. Or, do you want to wait out here another hour while your dad finds someone else to come get you? ’Cause I do want to eat dinner at some point before breakfast.

Eden picked up her backpack. Let’s go, she said.

Larry walked around to the driver’s side. You want to squeeze up front, or you want to sit in the back? he asked.

The back, Eden said.

Wait, I said.

What? The back is better, Eden said. She lowered her voice. I don’t want to sit next to him.

I don’t want to go, I said, slightly above a whisper.

Why not?

I don’t know.

Eden rolled her eyes. Lots of people ride in backs of trucks, she said.

I don’t like him.

Well, too bad. He’s friends with Dad.

How do you know?

Eden rolled her eyes again. Do you have to have proof of everything? she asked.

Dad would’ve given him a note or something.

Eden sighed a loud sigh. Look, I remember him from my birthday party.

I was shocked that she did because I couldn’t remember my fourth birthday party at all. You do?

Yes, she said. It was in the backyard and we had little individual containers of ice cream. I dropped mine on the ground and we didn’t have any extras and that’s why I’m crying in all the pictures. She flung her hair over her shoulder, exposing the multiple ear piercings I wasn’t allowed to get until I turned fifteen in the spring. Now, can we go?

Larry honked his horn a short beep and Eden pulled on my backpack strap and tugged me to the rear of the truck. Just climb on in and sit down, Larry said.

Eden climbed in first and helped me up. The truck bed had lots of junk in it, tools and wooden crates and sacks of stuff. We sat down with our backs against the cab, and the bus station got smaller and smaller as we drove out of the parking lot. Eden would later say it was like watching the end of a movie. She would also later say that she didn’t remember her fourth birthday party, but she had heard the story so many times she felt like she did.

2

When I was thirty-five, my mother was dying of cancer. She had a cough she ignored for weeks, months maybe, she said, maybe a year, and when she went to the doctor he didn’t have great news. She told me it wasn’t a big deal. I didn’t need to come out, she said. Her friend would drive her to her treatments. They ask you to bring a friend to drive you home because you can be groggy afterward. It’s the same thing they tell you when you get an abortion, she said. My mother had volunteered at a women’s health clinic for years. When she had given me and Eden the obligatory teenage birth control talk, she confessed that she had had an abortion. I was too young, she said. I couldn’t be pregnant at that time. It was barely legal. I had to drive to a different state. Eden and I didn’t have much of a reaction to her abortion story and I think it disappointed her. When she told me she had cancer, she bypassed me having a reaction. Don’t worry, she said. People get this kind of thing every day.

I flew out to see her in October. Since she moved to the West Coast I rarely visited because the plane ticket was out of my poor, starving playwright price range. She was sicker than I thought. For a moment I didn’t recognize her. She was thin and gray and slow-moving. Her skin was translucent in places. It was hard for her to breathe. She had an oxygen tank on wheels that she trolleyed around like a small dog. She looked at me when I first arrived and I couldn’t tell if her eyes were watery because she was crying or if she was happy to see me or if it was some side effect of her treatment. I was dressed in jeans, a T-shirt, and a leather jacket, and my mother said, You’re cold. She went to a closet and pulled out a fleece sweatshirt and insisted I put it on, which I did, even though it was two sizes too big and a shade of purple I would never wear. She nodded at me approvingly and then said, You need better socks. This is the Northwest. She started rummaging through the closet again and I said, You don’t have to do that. And she said, I’ve got some extra wool socks in here. I said, Mom, it’s really okay. I said, I packed other socks. I’m pretty good at dressing and taking care of myself. Her oxygen machine started beeping and she said, Oh, be quiet, to it, and when it wouldn’t shut up, she bent down and tapped it and whispered, Please, please, please. Then she got a little lightheaded and teetered backwards into the closet, her extra clothes and blankets cushioning her fall, her oxygen tubing getting tangled up in the buckle of a winter coat and sliding up her cheek. She waved me away when I tried to help her up. Happens all the time, she said.

My mother’s friend Gail came by with cannabis oil and instructed me to rub it into my mother’s chest. Gail had basically moved in. It’s not good, Gail said. It’s spread to her lungs. There’s not much more they can do for her unless she can get on a clinical trial. I wasn’t sure how I reacted to Gail; I tried not to show any reaction. I didn’t know Gail. My mother had mentioned her a few times, but I didn’t keep track of my mother’s friends. Gail told me that everything was in order, my mother’s papers and things. Her estate. There really isn’t anything there of substance, Gail said. She didn’t have good insurance and had to spend down her assets, what she had of them. It’s probably all just going to break even. She said you weren’t expecting anything monetary like that anyway. Gail said, You won’t have to worry about the paperwork. She didn’t want to bother you with it. She knows you’re busy with your career.

Gail didn’t guilt me on any of that, on being the absent daughter, or being the daughter who didn’t rush to take care of her mother. She knew my mother didn’t operate that way. My mother was all business, no fuss. She had delegated her health to Gail, who sent me periodic updates via email.

I started calling my mother once a week. She thought it was odd. Anything wrong? she asked after the third time I called and it appeared it was going to be a regular thing. I’m not dying, she said. I asked her how she was feeling, and she snapped, I’m not going to talk about my fucking cancer! I’m fucking sick of it! There’s more to me than this fucking disease! She was quiet for a second, huffing as best she could on her oxygen machine. I had never heard my mother so angry, not even when she was in the middle of divorcing my dad. I meekly said I was sorry. She strained to catch a decent breath. We’re not going to do this, she said. Do what? I asked. We’re not going to have some heart-to-heart, mother-daughter moment where I officially say goodbye to you. Life is for the living, she said. Go live your life.

Gail was the one who called me. I don’t know how to get in touch with your sister, she said. I was silent, in disbelief that this was how it was happening. Your mother dies and you get a call on your cell phone when you are at a temp job and out on a break, walking aimlessly around midtown Manhattan to avoid going back inside a soul-sucking cube farm, dressed in a faux corporate costume you would like to burn, so obviously an alien among all the other passersby on the street who seem to have no problem with normal life. You are the freak standing on the curb, not walking when the WALK sign says walk, frustrating people shoving past you with their salad-bar lunches. You are exposed as the impostor you always were.

I told Gail I didn’t know where Eden was and I doubted my dad did either. Gail asked if I wanted her to call him. I have his numbers, she said. I said no, I would do it. She asked when I would come out for the service, and that’s when I started crying. It was near Christmas and flights would be astronomical. I embarrassingly blubbered something about that. The thing you wish you didn’t say the moment you learned your mother just died. How expensive it was going to be.

3

I spent two weeks in Oregon, cleaning up my mother’s death. Or cleaning up her existence. I didn’t do much but sign papers Gail put in front of me and nod when she said she could store my mother’s belongings in her son’s garage until I needed them. I wandered around a house I didn’t know very well, staring at my mother’s things and random objects that had survived my childhood before Gail wrapped them in newspaper and tucked them in a box. Then, to avoid going home, I changed my ticket and went to my father’s house in Virginia, where his new girlfriend attempted to conquer my grief with good Christmas cheer. I had no gifts for anyone and she assured me it was okay. My father acknowledged the situation with only an extra hug when he picked me up at the airport. I slouched on their sofa and catatonically flipped through cable TV channels for a week and the three of us did a good job of ignoring each other.

When I got back to New York, a pile of mail was neatly assembled outside my apartment door. The locks on my building’s mailboxes had ceased to work for most of the apartments a long time ago. This pissed off the postman because it took him twice as long to sort our mail. If you were gone for more than a few days, he dropped your mail on the floor and left footprints on it on his way out. Every now and then, in a display of neighborly concern or holiday spirit, someone would collect and sort the fallen mail and distribute it throughout the building.

I had inherited this apartment from my old professor, Cortland, who had unofficially moved to France. It was an illegal sublet and I paid his girlfriend in cash every month. We would meet at a café, and somehow part of the deal was that I had to pay for her giant latte and sometimes a cookie. If I suggested swinging by her office, she would say, No, that’s okay. I can totally meet for coffee.

The top letter on my stack of mail was from the landlord, and it was addressed to Cortland. It didn’t have a stamp. It was the landlord who had clearly gathered my mail and then added this little cherry. It was corroborated by a message from Cortland on the answering machine. (Cortland insisted on keeping his ancient landline so as not to arouse suspicion, and he had a cheap phone plan grandfathered in from the nineties that didn’t include voicemail.) Got a little call from the landlord, Cortland said. Wanted to check in with you about it. Cortland, even though he was a writer, had an aversion to putting anything in writing. He refused to discuss anything about the apartment over email for fear of creating a paper trail. But I wasn’t going to bother to figure out how to call Cortland in Europe. I was happy to play dumb and wait until he called me back.

The day after New Year’s, Cortland’s girlfriend asked to meet for giant lattes. She was already at the café when I arrived and had claimed a table for us by draping her coat and blanket-sized scarf over the extra chair. She was doodling in her journal, head bent down, her long, perfectly tousled hair fanning over her writing hand, and she didn’t see me walk in. I ordered two coffees and set her tall cup on the table along with the padded envelope of rent cash. Here you go, I said. I made a Boy Scout salute with the fingers of my free hand, curtsied, and pivoted to make my exit. Done and done.

No, no, wait, she called in her high-pitched voice. She reached out and stroked my arm. Let’s sit, she said.

She moved her wraps off the empty chair to make room for me. I told her I didn’t have a lot of time, but she acted like she didn’t hear me. When all of her accoutrements were resituated, she closed her eyes and extended her arms across the table, like a cat stretching out its front paws. She reached a little farther and lightly held my wrists, taking my pulse or assessing my chi. When the mantra she was reciting in her head was complete, she released my hands and opened her eyes. I have some difficult news to tell you, she said.

She stirred her latte with a wooden stick. She pulled it out and licked it. Cortland is coming back, she said. He’s teaching here next semester. So, that’s great. But he said he’s had some problems with the landlord nosing around the apartment. And it’s making him—she scrunched her face, raised her hands, and seesawed her body side to side—nervous.

She slurped the foam off her coffee and wiped her top lip with her bottom one. Obviously he felt anxious about telling you this, which is why he’s getting me to do his dirty business. She widened her eyes as she leaned back in her chair and pulled down her sweater. She picked at pieces of her bangs that felt out of place and fluffed up her long hair by gently massaging her scalp. Then she realized she was fidgeting and stretched her arms across the table again.

Cortland’s coming back. Well, I said that. She rolled her eyes at her own ridiculousness. But he’s going to take over the apartment again. He’s going to use it as a writing studio. Until things blow over. Then maybe you can move back.

I was still. When I sat down with her it was only perfunctory, on the edge of the chair, my legs crossed, my body angled away from her, ready to get up and leave. I never took off my coat or let go of my paper cup. I opened my mouth slightly but didn’t say anything. I uncrossed my legs and turned to face her.

I know, she said. I’m sorry if this is difficult for you.

He’s kicking me out? I asked, purposefully filling the situation with drama.

No, she said, crossing her hands at her wrists in front of her and overusing her lips to form words, a gesture she learned from her brief stint with Occupy Wall Street. No. Not at all. He’s just following your agreement.

What? I was half laughing, wondering if I could talk her out of this decision. Make her forget about us meeting and following Cortland’s instructions for delivery of information. Buy her another latte and a chocolate croissant.

You agreed that it would be open-ended, but that either of you could end it with a month’s notice. So he asked me to give you a month’s notice. For the last part she smiled with difficulty, exposing her teeth and looking at me with concern, the way a student gives an answer in a classroom when unsure of the response, worried that she is saying something upsetting, but still wanting credit for giving the correct answer.

All I could say was Fuck.

I know, she said, looking at me, communicating that she was sad to make me sad, and that she did not enjoy being the deliverer of sad news one bit. I had moved into Cortland’s place when I broke up with my girlfriend, Noreen. Cortland had been happy to help me out. I know what it’s like, he said. I’ve been there. When he split up with his second wife he had nowhere to go and a friend in the building had gotten him the apartment where I now lived, or used to live until Cortland revoked my tenancy by girlfriend proxy. The girlfriend reached for my wrists again, inhaled, and let them go. She looked at me for the cue that our tension was abating and she could talk about something else fascinating that