Eden Close by Anita Shreve Page B

back—that something patient and waiting. He thinks, too, about all the longing there was inside her, so intriguing for a boy, from a distance, to observe. Where does it all go to, he wonders, when the person you long for dies?
    He turns his gaze away from her. Despite the years, despite his discomfort here, he has a strangely familiar sense of this room. Sometimes when he dreams, this kitchen is the setting. The characters are ones who don't belong here: his boss at work; Billy; a woman he has seen that day turning a corner. They gather in this kitchen; or there will be, in the
middle of another dream, a shift in place, so that he is here with them, unfolding a plot begun elsewhere.
    "How is Eden?" he asks suddenly. His voice is louder than he has intended.
    She looks at the sink. "Eden is not well. She tires easily." The sentence sounds rehearsed, or oft repeated.
    "I'd like to see her," he says recklessly.
    She shakes her head. "It would upset her."
    "I wouldn't upset her. I would just..." He searches for a word. "Visit."
    "Well, not today." She rattles the cubes in her glass, and her mouth tightens. She raises her chin.
    "Why not?"
    "She's sleeping. And I've found that memories from the past upset her," she says. "I have to contend with that for days." She brushes an imaginary strand of hair from her forehead.
    "But does she see anyone?" he asks. (His persistence surprises him. Why is he being so rude? But he is in it now and cannot stop.) "Does she go anywhere? There must be programs, centers for the blind."
    She stands up and rinses her glass at the sink. "I'm a
nurse,
" she says, with emphasis on the last word, as if that should settle the matter. As if trying to make him again the neighbor's child. "As you must know, Eden
was
away for several years in the beginning, but we've found she does better with me here. We have a quiet life, and it suits her."
    He is about to quiz her once more, when above him he hears a sound, like that of a chair leg scraping against the floor. Or he imagines that he hears a sound. Edith Close says nothing; he examines her to see if she, too, has heard anything. Then he hears another sound, the weight on the floorboards of footsteps moving from one side of the room to the other. Eden's room, in the corner, is above the kitchen. Or does she have another room now?
    Edith Close walks to Andrew and holds her hand out for his glass. "Will five dollars an hour be enough?" she asks.
    He looks up at her. He sees no point in protesting. He knows she won't let him do the work without an arrangement of some kind. He says,
Fine.
He gives her the glass, which is still nearly full. "And there will be lumber for the steps," she adds. "Shall I give you some money now?"
    He shakes his head. He knows she wants him to go.
    He stands up, and as he does so, he hears music from a radio. He freezes and listens. It is definitely a radio. She hears it too; he sees her shoulders hunch almost imperceptibly, as if wishing to ward off the sound. He thinks he hears a phrase of "Glory Days," then silence, then the voice of a disc jockey. He looks at the ceiling.
    She touches him, a hand on his elbow, and the touch startles him. Her fingers are cold on his skin.
    "I have to see a patient," she says, guiding him toward the door.
    And though he knows this can't be true, and though he wants to say that Eden must now be awake, her touch—that cold, unwelcome touch—makes him feel as if he
were
a boy again, eager to get away, to be gone from the dark kitchen.
    She walks him to the door. The radio voice follows them, seems distinctly louder, in fact.
    "Thanks for the iced tea," he mumbles.
    He backs down the steps with something like a wave, and she quickly closes the door. He forgets the rotting stoop, and with his weight, the bottom step cracks. He nearly falls backward onto the gravel, awkwardly catching himself on the railing. When he turns, his hands are shaking. He thrusts his fists into his pockets to collect