Chris Bohjalian - Secrets of Eden

DECEMBER 14: † ’s hair reminds me these days of Christmas. It always has the aroma of evergreen. We were alone, and we talked about my situation. Our situation. I view everything differently when I see it through his eyes. Suddenly the things that I thought were my fault aren’t. All those things that I had viewed as my mistakes? Not my mistakes at all. I always come away a little hopeful, a little confident that there is a plan and things will get better. He is the gentlest person I know. And he opens up to me in a way he doesn’t with other people, in the same way that I can open up to him .

MARCH 11: The whole house was ours tonight. Unimaginable happiness. The day was good, too. Katie and I had breakfast together, which we usually don’t because she is so busy with makeup and figuring out her clothes and trying to find her math homework. And I’m busy getting ready for work. But I made waffles. I woke up before my alarm, and I surprised her with waffles. Such a good time. And then there was † . At one point, when I saw † in the afternoon, he said together we should make some decisions about my future. He’s right. It is time. And then there was the night. Heavenly .

The March 11 entry certainly implied that Alice Hayward and Reverend Drew were romantically involved, but I had spent enough time with Aaron Lamb in the courtroom to know this: Before a jury he was capable of arguing convincingly that on March 11 Alice and her pastor had had a discussion about her estrangement from her husband during the day, and then later Alice had had a cozy evening at home with her daughter-capitalizing upon the mother-daughter bonding she had initiated with waffles at breakfast.

Likewise, the short passage that Alice added on December 14 didn’t exactly have the two of them rolling around the floor together beside a Christmas tree. The fact that she says they were alone wasn’t proof of anything, since Drew obviously was going to be counseling her in private. I knew even as I reviewed the diary that I was going to need a lot more evidence to charge him with murder.

What I found most interesting as the State’s resident cynic was this: Drew had become a cross in the diary long before George Hayward had left. If the pair had been playing Hester and Dimmesdale, it seemed possible that the affair had commenced as long as eight weeks before George Hayward had been ordered to keep his distance. I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall in their counseling sessions. I could just hear that Waspy, clipped voice of Drew’s as, perhaps, he urged her to leave George-which obviously was exactly the right advice, unless his ulterior motive was inside his own khaki pants. And I couldn’t help but wonder whether the fight between Alice and George that finally led her to get the relief-from-abuse order had been triggered by her involvement with her minister. Either Drew had given her the confidence to get rid of her pathetic excuse for a husband (a very good thing) or he was manipulating his way into her bedroom (a pretty despicable misuse of power). There was no entry until little more than a week after she had kicked George out of the house, which wasn’t illogical, since Alice clearly wasn’t an inveterate diary keeper and she must have been busy reorganizing her life once her husband was gone:

FEBRUARY 17: George still at the lake, Katie and me holding down the fort. She is okay .

I don’t feel like a single mom, but I guess I am. House is quiet since Katie’s out a lot. Funny: Not sure I feel safer not having George around in the night. I know I am. But now it’s just us girls, Katie and me and Lula. I still keep the gun in the tubs with my clothes in the closet. I don’t want it around .

Back is still sore, but arm and elbow less swollen .

The sore back and swollen elbow were the only references to the violence that had led her to finally get that restraining order.

Still, I did learn more about Alice Hayward, and it was evident that she really wasn’t the self-help-magazine poster child for battered wives everywhere. She wasn’t a perfect fit with the profile. Sure, George was the primary breadwinner and clearly subsidized an outwardly very nice lifestyle for them, but she wasn’t totally dependent upon him financially. She had a job and an income. Moreover, she wasn’t the daughter of an abused wife.

I did, however, wonder if her self-esteem wasn’t so low that it had started to burrow underground-and that did fit the sketch. The brute she was married to was quite capable of undermining her faith in herself. He might not have been using her skull as a piñata, but he still knew that he could inflict pain anytime he opened his mouth:

Obviously I wasn’t trying to burn the pork chops. But I did. I ruined them just like he said. I ruined dinner. If he’d just left me alone .

He says it was my fault Katie stayed out too late with Tina and a boy named Martin we’ve never met. He’s probably right. But I tried to reach her on her cell, I did my best. I did!

I can’t make a plumber appear like magic. Maybe other people can .

When did I get so wrinkled? When did I get so fat? He’s right. Sometimes I just hate myself. I even hate my hair .

Called me a cunt, and I asked him what he meant by that. He got red in the face, and I got scared, and he reminded me that I had been flirting with Katie’s English teacher. Was I? I thought I was just trying to be nice because Katie is so talented and he’s shown so much interest in her writing. But maybe I did cross a line. Maybe I did go too far. So embarrassed now. So angry at myself. He didn’t hit me .

Said I looked like a slut. A fat slut. Not even a pretty slut. He said I humiliated us both .

How could I have picked exactly the wrong drapes? I did. I am such a jerk sometimes. Such a jerk .

It didn’t seem to me from her diary that she was staying with George for the sake of their daughter. The girl by then was a fifteen-year-old with a stud in her nose. If anything, Alice had the common sense to see that getting smacked around and verbally abused by her man wasn’t precisely the sort of role-model behavior a teenage girl ever should see. But she did understand this about her marriage: George was better to her when Katie was around-and she herself was safer.

George is different when Katie’s in the house. Not always. But sometimes. It’s like he’s on his best behavior. I know Katie has seen us fight, and lately she’s gotten in the middle (which somehow I can’t let happen ever again). But I also know George is less likely to hit me when she’s home. So maybe she tells herself all parents fight. He drinks less when she’s here, and that means he’s really more himself. The man I know he can be and the way he used to be all the time. Not perfect. But not mean .

I wish I knew how to talk to her about this. I wish I was smarter. I wish I wasn’t so embarrassed. But her father and I just have so much history. It’s weird. She doesn’t know the best of her dad, and I don’t think she knows the worst. But I’m sure she knows a lot more than she would ever admit .

One more thing about Alice was textbook: She would defend George’s behavior by blaming it on alcohol. The idea that when he was steering clear of beer, things were better seemed to reinforce the connection in her mind that it was barley and hops that were bruising her, not her spouse. I thought it was notable that he didn’t drink on their wedding anniversary:

Flowers, chocolates, a massage with those soft hands of his-the whole deal. It’s been a really excellent week. Made love tonight, and it was good .

There were two separate sheets of heavy, granite-colored résumé-bond paper folded into the diary, and each one held a poem George had written to her in blue ink. They were both fourteen-line sonnets. One included an indictment of his own behavior: