Chris Bohjalian - Secrets of Eden

When, once, she cataloged for me the clothes she was not allowed to wear, I sighed with a mixture of pastoral concern and libidinous longing: I would have been happy to have seen her in any of those things. Instead Alice was likely to be attired in dresses and skirts that were dowdy and sad. Still, when I saw her undressed for the first time, I was not surprised by what a prize she was. She was one year my junior; she had legs that were lithe and long, and a stomach as firm as a dancer’s.

The Haywards had lived (and died) in a handsome Cape Cod they’d built on two acres of meadow that once had been a part of one of the village’s larger dairy farms. The property was being sold just about the time that they were thinking of leaving their Bennington apartment, four rooms that had been fine even when Katie was a baby but was feeling cramped now that their daughter was six. Most of the property, including the largest parcels, went to the sons and daughters of the dairy farmer, but a substantial section was commandeered by a lawyer and his wife from Westchester-the Brookners-while a two-acre block with impressive views and a small ravine that tended to get a little swampy in April and May went to the Haywards. Theirs was a crisp and modern three-bedroom home, and George had done a fair amount of the work on it himself.

They would live there for not quite nine years.

ALICE WAS IN her nightgown when George wrapped his hands around her neck and crushed her windpipe and the strap muscles in the larynx, but she hadn’t yet gotten into bed. The medical examiner estimated it was sometime between eight and nine P.M. when George pressed her against the wall beside a living-room window, in all likelihood lifting her off the floor and slamming the back of her head so hard against the wall as he worked that he dented the Sheetrock. And he killed her while she was slashing away at his own flesh with a ferocity that I suspected might have been there but had certainly never seen manifest myself.

Although no one other than Alice spent any time with George on the day that he died, we all assumed that the clothes in which he was found were the ones he had been wearing most of the day: Blue jeans and a navy blue T-shirt with a small chest pocket. He was barefoot when he was discovered on the couch, slumped back onto the cushions, one arm spread atop a throw pillow and the other hanging over the side of the armrest. George had been right-handed, and the bullet had entered his head just above his right ear, roughly three inches above where his jaw met his neck, and taken off a sizable chunk of his skull. Dangling from his fingers was a Smith & Wesson.357-caliber handgun with a square butt and a stainless-steel finish. The bullet had exited the head just left of the summit of the cranium and was embedded high in the wall near the window.

Nobody heard a gunshot, but the nearest house belonged to that lawyer’s family from Westchester, and they hadn’t been in Haverill that weekend. Likewise, no one heard the two of them fight, and so no one had any idea what precisely had set George off this last time. Ginny O’Brien conjectured the next morning that he’d probably hit Alice, and she’d either told him in some new fashion that he’d better not do that again, or-even more likely-said that she was kicking him out once more. This time for good. Perhaps she had straightened her spine and told him to pack a bag and be gone. But this also may have been merely an unachieved aspiration Ginny had had for her friend.

Nevertheless, in one of the days immediately after Alice was killed, a female minister I’ve known since seminary-a woman who counsels a great many victims (and perpetrators) of domestic abuse-tried to convince me that this was indeed what had occurred. George had probably hit Alice, and she had told him that was it, they were finished. She’d had it. George, in turn, had warned her that she’d better not even try to get dressed. And when she’d said that he couldn’t stop her, he’d killed her. It was the classic pattern, my friend said.

Her point? Alice Hayward had wanted to live. She hadn’t expected to die, and I hadn’t missed some staggeringly obvious signal at the baptism. This wasn’t my fault. Of course, my minister friend hadn’t been at the pond that afternoon. Nor did she know Alice’s and my-and I use this word with both guilelessness and guilt-history. Perhaps if Alice had left behind a suitcase, I might think otherwise. In my mind it is resting on her side of their bed, half filled and hastily packed. But there wasn’t one. There wasn’t even a small pile of clothes anywhere in the bedroom: No shirt, no jeans, no panties, no socks. I would not have needed a suitcase at the scene to have my faith resurrected, but I did need a sign that she had at least planned to leave the house that night.

AND THERE WAS this: Her mother would tell me when we met in my church on folding metal chairs that Monday night that her daughter had been planning to schedule appointments with a lawyer in Bennington and an advocate at the women’s shelter. Alice, her mother insisted, wanted to understand what she needed to do to protect her daughter from George in the event that something like-and here her mother waved her arm once as if swatting at a fly and then collapsed in upon herself in sobs- this ever happened to her. Alice had even taught her parents a new expression: the termination or extinguishment of parental rights. She wanted, her mother insisted, to be sure that George wouldn’t have control of Katie if somehow her husband got away with murder.

“I told her to get out of the house, but… but she wouldn’t listen,” she stammered through her tears, as her husband awkwardly rubbed her shoulders and the back of her neck from his own folding chair.

And if I needed any more proof of my suspicions, it resided in a red felt jewelry box that Katie had told us about that afternoon: Two days before she would die, that Friday, Alice had taken the ruby-and-diamond earrings and the pearl necklace that had belonged to her own grandmother-Katie’s great-grandmother-and given them to her daughter, telling Katie to keep them close to her chest.

THE CHURCH WOMEN’S Circle included about fifteen members of the congregation. They met Monday mornings at seven to accommodate the half dozen members who had jobs outside the home, convening each time in a different woman’s living room or terrace or kitchen. Rarely were all fifteen present; usually there were no more than eleven or twelve women there. The meetings usually lasted until nine-thirty or ten, with the members whose schedules demanded they leave sooner departing whenever they needed. During the school year, for instance, Ginny stayed most Mondays only until seven forty-five because she was due at the village school a little before eight. Alice’s schedule at the bank was Tuesday through Saturday, however, and so she never left early. She was known for remaining till the very end, with the elderly women who were retired and whose children were grown and who had nowhere else they needed to be. When I had suggested the Women’s Circle to Alice, offering the idea one evening when we were alone at the parsonage, I thought it would be weeks or even months before she might find the courage to contact one of the informal group leaders. I could see how thoroughly George had eroded her confidence and severed her ties with so many of her friends-with so much of the world. I contemplated having one of the members reach out to her. But I was mistaken. Within days Alice had contacted the woman nearest her age, Ginny O’Brien, and had asked if she could come to the next meeting. The fact that the group met on the very day Alice had off seemed like a good omen.

And I have no doubts that the women provided a necessary respite for Alice-and yes, a better shoulder than mine. Still, only Ginny knew the extent of George’s violence, and Alice forbade her from ever bringing it up at the Women’s Circle.