Eden Page 6

  One of Zara’s computers woke up and its screen began flickering lines of code. She went to tend to it. “It’s up to you,” she said as she sat down at her desk.

  I debated taking the train, but the bus was so much cheaper. I packed a small backpack and a tote bag. I told Zara I might only be gone for the day. I could take a late-night bus back to New York. “Or I might stay at my dad’s,” I said, although I hadn’t told him I was coming. My bus left the Port Authority at one in the morning. I used to do this when I was a college student; I hated the idea of wasting a day traveling. The overnight buses were never late because there was less traffic, and no one tried to talk to you—everyone was asleep. Everybody I knew hated the bus, but I didn’t mind it. I had grown up on one, more or less.

  I didn’t feel tired so I took out my notebook and pen and flipped through the pages. Zara was right: I didn’t have anything going on. I had a couple of scraps of ideas for different plays, but mostly they were fragments. I hadn’t had a play produced in a long time because I hadn’t finished a play in a long time. A play that takes place on a bus, I wrote sloppily as the ride joggled my pen, where everyone is asleep. I stared at my scraggy handwriting, unsure if it was a good idea or not. Something to do with who is really awake and who is just drifting through life. I tapped my pen. It would be expensive to do a play on a real bus. It would require extra insurance or permits or something. Where would it park? Where would it go? Can anyone drive a bus, or do you need a special license? How many sleeping actors would I need? And then how many seats would be left over for the audience?

  I scratched out the page. It was a random idea. I didn’t know what it was about.

  I woke up at six. The scenery had changed. The bus began to curl onto the Beltway. I debated using the onboard bathroom and decided against it. The guy sitting in front of me woke up, stretched, and began methodically cracking his knuckles. Poor people and students take the bus. I guess I’m one of the poor people. For a brief period, I had a job as a content writer at an Internet start-up and I made good money and got out of debt. But immediately after the company ran through its seed capital, one of the partners gathered us for a meeting where he sat on the edge of his desk and said he was moving on to work on an exciting new project. “I like starting things,” he said, “that’s my strength. And you guys are doing great. You don’t really need me anymore.” He had brought in a keg of beer and ordered us pizza. This was a happy occasion, he tried to convince us. Two weeks later they laid off half the staff. My emails to coworkers bounced back. The cubicles slowly emptied out until I was one of the few people left. Technically I was a freelancer, so technically they couldn’t fire me. After another few weeks I couldn’t take it anymore. I went into the remaining partner’s office and asked for an end date. He said he didn’t know. He was still hoping things could turn around. I felt bad for him. I said, “Why don’t we say till the end of the month?” He acknowledged his defeat. He said, “I might still call you after that,” but he never did.

  I could have built on that experience and made it into something resembling a sustainable career, but I fell back into the same precarious financial position I had been in since I was a college student. I knew someone who worked as a branding strategist, whatever that was. I could’ve done something like that. I wondered that out loud to Zara before I left. “You weren’t interested in it,” Zara said. I asked her what she meant. Why wouldn’t I be interested in it? “Because you decided your life was about writing plays and trying to get at the truth of something by bringing people together and sitting in a dark theater for an hour. And now that’s who you are. You put all your chips in that basket long ago.” I wasn’t sure what to say to that. I didn’t remember ever consciously making such a decision. I wondered if anyone actually did. Maybe I did. I wasn’t sure if that’s what my life was about, or if that’s just what my life happened to be. Zara said, “You’re sort of like a junkie. You use what’s in front of you to pay for your fix.” I asked what my fix was. What was I addicted to? “To continuing,” she said.

  At the Matoaka County district attorney’s office I was directed to sit next to a large copy machine, and when I did, my head was below the level of the receptionist’s desk divider. The receptionist leaned out to the side of her partition every now and then to check on me, to make sure I was still there. Finally, after the phone rang, she led me a few steps down the hall to a conference room and said, “He’ll be right in.”

  The oversized table left little room to move around behind the chairs. There were boxes stacked haphazardly against the walls.

  The door opened and the DA entered carrying a stack of file folders. He looked overworked. He was short, out of shape, and slightly out of breath. He shook my hand and sat down. “Happy you contacted us,” he said.

  “Did you write to the parole board?” he asked. I said I hadn’t. I didn’t know the address or whom to write to, and I didn’t know what to say, exactly. He said it was okay. “We still have the football,” he said. He flipped through some of his folders, then closed them and rested his forearms on top of them. He said that we had an interesting case.

  He coughed into his hand to begin his speech.

  “When you were picked up by the police, you said you hadn’t been raped.” He looked down when he said that and paused. I wondered if he was trained to do that. To not appear aggressive when talking about rape. Maybe he had to take a seminar on it and someone, somewhere, produces training videos for lawyers on how to talk about rape. And they suggested putting in these little pauses in order to give the interviewee some space while discussing potentially upsetting subjects. I said, “Right.” He looked up at me and said, “Right.” He opened a folder and skimmed it quickly, like an actor cheating, looking at his lines scribbled inside a prop because he can’t remember them word for word. “They did a . . . an exam on you at the hospital and didn’t find anything specific. And Larry burned your possessions that were left at the scene. So we didn’t have a lot of physical evidence. Your sister, however, wouldn’t say anything one way or the other and refused to submit to a physical exam. The file says they sent in counselors, but she didn’t say a word, wouldn’t budge, and your mother didn’t force the issue. And I don’t blame her. What you went through was horrific. It’s amazing that you got out of there in one piece and are sitting here today. I don’t know if I would’ve done any different if it were my daughters.”

  He cleared his throat, leaned back in his chair, and called out to the receptionist down the hall. He asked her to bring in some water. “Would you like a glass of water or anything?” he asked. I said I didn’t. He drank half his cup right away. He was gearing himself up for something.

  “Is there anything different about this that you would like to tell me? About the whole experience? Anything that you remember after the fact? Something you might not have told the police at the time? You know, sometimes things come back to you later on.”

  I shook my head. “No,” I said. “I don’t think so.”

  “I understand what your parents did,” he said. “They just wanted this horror show to end and get you girls back to normal life and healed up. And considering the evidence they had on hand and the technology at the time, and considering the mental welfare of you girls, I think they made a reasonable decision. So, here’s the thing: your sister, you, you’re adults now. And you can make your own decisions. We would like you to consider revising your statements, adding information you might not have mentioned. We would like to establish a pattern that would connect Larry to another case.”

  He waited for me to say something. He reached for his water cup and drained it.

  I said there really wasn’t anything else to say. I said I was sure I told them everything at the time and said everything there was to say.

  “We would really be interested in hearing from your sister,” he said. He refilled his cup from the plastic pitcher. I laughed. “So would I,” I said. He sipped some more water and swallowed. “You
’re not in contact with her?” he asked. I said I hadn’t seen her in years. And I didn’t know where she was living. And my family didn’t either.

  He looked down at his folders. He rearranged them, reordered them, picked one up and tapped it against the table. “Do you remember the last time you did see her? Or your parents saw her?” “Not really,” I said. “Okay,” he said. He paused, unsure of how to proceed. He folded his arms over his stomach and leaned back in his chair. He pulled his arms apart and wove his fingers together. He looked up at the ceiling.

  “But you know what happened,” he said. “You were a witness to your sister’s assault. Often that’s more valuable in court than a statement from the actual victim.”

  My only interaction with the legal system in my adult life had been a voir dire for jury duty where I got excused by saying I had been abducted as a child. Everyone thought I was lying, and one of the lawyers laughed at the preposterousness of my claim. But the judge either took pity on me or didn’t want to waste time asking me specifics, and she let me go. Now I squinted at the DA. I was confused and trying not to smile from nervousness. He was rewriting my story, or at least I think he was. I think he was asking me to lie, or to bend the truth, or to tell the truth as he wanted to hear it. Because I hadn’t seen everything that happened to Eden. But it would be perfect for me to say I had. I felt like I had walked into an intricate role-playing game and didn’t know how seriously we were playing. An actor in one of my plays once told me he got his Equity card by working at a Renaissance fair, and some people got way too into it, refusing to relinquish their Shakespearean accents at the end of the day for the van ride home.

  “Would that be legal?” I asked.

  “I was hoping we could help each other. I’m just a small-town district attorney trying to keep my community safe. That’s what my concerns are. Here.” He pushed one of the files over to me and it slid across the table. “That’s a copy for you. Some information on the girl Larry grabbed who didn’t get away. Was not much older than you were, but not near as lucky. She’s got a mama and a daddy and a sister too.” He stood up. “I’d very much appreciate it if you could get in touch with your sister and tell her to give me a call.” He picked up the rest of his folders and walked out. The door was left open and he said something to the receptionist, leaning one elbow on the cubicle divider and crossing his ankles. He slapped his file folders against the side of his thigh. Then he walked down the hall and disappeared into an office.

  Outside, the sun was blinding. It was freakishly warm for winter. I stared at the intersection. I crossed to the opposite side and sat down on the bus stop bench. I had to wait almost forty minutes for a bus to take me to another bus that could return me to a Metro station so I could get back into the city. The squat, square-shaped county office building stared back at me, emotionless, from across the street.

  I texted Noreen and said I was in DC and maybe we could meet up. I wandered around town killing time until I heard back from her. I ate a sandwich at a café near Dupont Circle. Next to me, a power lunch was in session. A young guy was doing all the talking. He worked for a think tank. It sounded like it was about education, but I couldn’t be sure. It might have been about technology. Or technology in education. He knew a lot of people. He wanted to network. He’s probably younger than me, I thought. He probably doesn’t consistently roll over credit card debt. He’s barely thirty and probably owns a condo. “We’re about helping people,” he said to his new connection.

  I pulled open the glass doors of Noreen’s office suite, which was located not far from the tourist strip of the Hard Rock Cafe and Madame Tussauds wax museum, a fact I found strangely fitting for Noreen as a recent transplant from New York. I didn’t say anything to the clean-cut interns in khaki pants earning their college credits. I could tell they debated stopping me and asking if they could help. I was wearing jeans and boots and Eden’s old leather jacket. I was out of place among the novice career climbers of nonprofit corporate culture. They probably thought I was a messenger. Or a case study. Or Noreen’s pot dealer.

  Noreen waved me into her glassed-in office and motioned for me to close the door. She was talking on the phone and didn’t miss a beat of her conversation, which had something to do with “impending legislation.” She wore an earpiece and typed quickly on the computer as she talked. At one point, someone knocked on the door and delivered papers, which Noreen eyeballed while her associate stood there, waiting for approval.

  When she finally got off the phone, she came around and hugged me. Then she returned to sit behind her desk. “How are you?” she asked. “How’d everything go at your mom’s?”

  “Fine. Her friend took care of most of it.”

  “Oh, that’s right,” Noreen said. “Gail emailed me.” Noreen still kept in touch with my family, a fact I found annoying.

  Noreen began clicking something on her computer. Her eyes scanned the screen. “How’s your dad?”

  I could tell Noreen didn’t really care what my answers were. She was only asking questions to keep me occupied while she finished whatever it was she had to do. “He’s fine. He has a new girlfriend,” I said.

  “Of course,” Noreen said. “What are you working on these days? Do you have a new play coming up?”

  “I’m sort of in between projects right now,” I said. I didn’t want to talk about my writing with Noreen and I hoped she took the hint. I looked over at the windowsill next to her desk that was filled with framed pictures. When Noreen and I lived together, we had an apartment with an old nonworking fireplace. It had been bricked up long before we moved in, but the crumbling ornate mantel was still there. Noreen framed photos of us and sprinkled them across the mantel, in front of books on bookshelves, on top of the stereo speakers. Noreen and I were together for almost eight years. Right after we broke up she had a whirlwind romance, got married, got inseminated, got pregnant, and got a killer job in DC. It had been only two years, but already there were more pictures of her new wife and the baby than there ever were of me. And this was just her office.

  Noreen gave a final triumphant tap on her keyboard. She stood up and said, “Let’s go out.”

  We walked a few blocks to the Mall and sat down on a bench in front of the National Gallery. Across the grass, a double line of schoolkids trailed toward the Smithsonian’s Air and Space Museum. A teacher waited for the stragglers to catch up to the group. “Let’s go!” she shouted a couple of times, wheeling her arm in the direction she wanted them to move, but the kids refused to pick up their pace.

  “How’s your dad?” Noreen asked me again. She didn’t remember asking me in her office. “He’s fine,” I answered. “Oh, that’s right,” she said. She laughed a little and shook her head. “You told me. He has a new girlfriend.”

  Noreen stretched her legs out in front of her and crossed her ankles. She had nice shoes. Nicer than she could have afforded when we were together. And fancier than she would have worn at her old job as a social worker. (“I can’t look too nice or people will think I look down on them. And I can’t look too schlumpy or they’ll comment on it and it’ll be a distraction. I have to look very neutral.”) But now she had to look like she could handle large financial donations for the protection of reproductive rights.

  She pulled her feet back under the bench. “Everything okay with him? Or is this just a random guilt visit?”

  “No,” I said. I hesitated to tell Noreen what was going on because she had a way of co-opting my ideas. Once you told her an idea or a possible plan, you were committing to it, and she would follow up on it and hound you about it, even if it was the vaguest of inklings in your head. I learned to keep quiet around her, which didn’t work either. She felt that I didn’t share enough. That she wasn’t included enough in my life. That I didn’t think what she had to contribute was important. It would surprise most people who knew Noreen to hear that she was that insecure. Everyone always thought it would be Noreen who broke up with me, and not the other way
around.

  “I think I’m going to try and find Eden,” I said. Noreen raised her eyebrows and said, “Huh,” with seemingly little interest. I relayed what happened with the DA, and Noreen folded her arms across her chest. Her sunglasses rested halfway down her nose. She stretched her legs out again and looked at her feet. “I don’t know why you would bother doing that,” she said, “but I’ve never been a big fan of the myth of Eden.” She turned and looked at me. I didn’t know what Noreen wanted from me. I happened to be in town and I thought maybe we could have a simple coffee or lunch and she could give me some advice, since she knew the whole story and had some experience dealing with the legal system from her social worker days. It wasn’t my intention to give her an opportunity to subtly undermine me and talk me out of it.

  “How do you intend to find her?” Noreen asked. “Didn’t you try to do that once before?”

  “Not really,” I said.

  “But didn’t you used to Google her every now and then?”

  “This is different,” I said. The truth was, other than deep Internet sleuthing, I had no idea how to find Eden. I had never once gotten an email from her. As far as I knew, she had never had an email address. My previous searches never turned up anything. I assumed finding Eden would involve trying to find her old friends or asking at her old commune, both approaches probably futile and fruitless. And Noreen already knew this.

  “It seems to me that sometimes you use Eden as a way of not getting on with your life. Like you fetishize her. I’m not saying you fetishize what happened when you were kids. In fact, I think you’ve done remarkable work on yourself getting beyond that. But there is something about Eden that holds you back. Or that you hold on to. Maybe it’s because Eden never got over it. Or who knows if she did or she didn’t, since she’s elected to be incommunicado.” Noreen tucked a wisp of hair behind her ear. “I got to hand it to her, she really has a sweet setup. I’d love to have that kind of freedom. And that humongous sense of self-importance.”