Garden drama 3

We Were So Young

   Adam knew it was time to spill the beans. He was beating around the bush, and he figured his counselor knew it.
  This was his third therapy session, and he was paying through the nose. Fifty dollars just to talk for an hour to a lady half his age? And that was cheap as she could go, supposedly. She called it a sliding pay scale or something like that. Course these days you can't buy a cup of coffee for less than two fifty.
   He could have used the Medicare, but then Eve would find out somehow, he was sure. Or maybe he should have gone to free clinic - they have social workers that'll talk to people - but that's where Lily, Seth's wife works. If she found out...if somehow anyone found out he was seeing a shrink...gosh, who cares anyway, he thought, nobody takes an old man seriously.
   Seems like a hundred years since he and Eve ran away from home. If he was gonna go crazy don't you think it would have happened earlier? Like when Cain accidentally put a load of buck shot into Abel's back on their hunting trip? Like when Seth was born and he lost his job and they lived for a year in the abandoned mill workers' barracks. Like when he got to drinking more and more whiskey every night and Eve threatened to leave? 
   They survived Abel's death; he found another job; he quit drinking, mostly. All these problems he thought were over and done with...all a sudden they're bundled up, tied up, tightly like a hay bale, sitting on his doorstep when he comes home. In the kitchen when he wakes up to make coffee. In his back seat when he looks in the rear view mirror driving to church meeting. Why now?
  "Durnit, six months till retirement," he cursed under his breath as he pulled into office parking lot. "Finally, almost free of this dag-blame job and now I fall apart." Nightmares. Bouts of trembling. Blackouts.
   Two months ago, driving back along Route 12 from the grocery, he blacked out on the curve over by Enoch's place, ended up in the ditch. A hundred yards more and he'd have tumbled down into the ravine under the bridge. Luckily Enoch was at home with his truck to help him get his car back on the road. 
   "You ok Grandpa?" asked Enoch. Adam waved it off, "Just caught a glare in my eye. You know how it is coming around that curve this time of day." Enoch nodded his head. "Yeah the sunset can get you. Hey Gramps why don't you go down to the doc, get yourself checked out real good? Talk to someone." 
   Adam laughed, "I'm only 70 boy; I ain't gonna let them take away my license just yet. No, you're right. Getting old will do a number on you."
   In his first two sessions he stopped short of where his sentences were heading. "Fruit, anything you know, like an orange or peach or apple, well it all tastes like ash nowadays (because when I look at it I'm back in the orchard)." "It's that, I can't look Eve in the eye anymore (because she looks more and more like Mama everyday)." "It's been fifteen years since I touched my wife in bed (because I never could do it lying down, and there ain't no way I could do it like we used to, not anymore)."
   Adam sat down on the therapists couch. "Thank you Miss, uh Miss Jah, I really do appreciate your help - I guess I'm just a silly old man - Do you mind if I lean my head back and close my eyes?"
   "Of course, this time is for you," Mrs Jah said. She was so calm and confident; Adam didn't know if that set him more or less at ease. "You do what you need to do. Why don't we pick up where we left off last week. You were telling me about your mother, Eliza, right?"
   Adam leaned back. "Yes, but we just called her Mama El."
   "It's so hard to remember my early days. We, me and sis, we always called her Mama El. I dunno why. She was so good to us. We had so much freedom back then, rambling all over the farm. Mama El could grow everything, not like me, though sis got some of her talent. Sis got a lot from her, ya know." Adam sighed. "Durn it, Miss, I can't, I, well, I got to tell you." Adam opened his eyes to look at Mrs. Jah and shook his head. She raised her eyebrows to invite him to continue. She didn't seem worried.
   "I been hiding from you, from everybody. Me and Eve. My wife. My sister. She's my sister too, I think. I married my sister. Well I don't guess we ever rightly married." Adam clenched his folded hands and tapped his forehead. "Now you call the police and tell this ugly old man to get out."
   Mrs. Jah leaned forward slightly,  "Mr Eden, I'm here to help you talk through what you need to talk through. I'm not surprised by what you've said. You've been hinting at that. How does it feel now that you've told someone?"
   Adam shook his head again. "I don't know. I just can't deal with it anymore."
   Mrs. Jah, "What do you mean by "it"?"
   Adam, "The whole thing. What we did. Mama El. Looking back now, I mean, she was so old. Was she even really our mother? Or our grandmother? Where was our father? We didn't know nobody but each other and the animals till we ran off, although I guess Mama El would tell us stories about people and cities and things. It's all just a haze and blurry memories. Except for the orchard shack. Mrs Jah the orchard shack's killing me. Seems like more and more every day, especially since I turned 70, the orchard shack is coming back to torture me."
   Mrs. Jah, "Why don't you start by describing the farm?"
   Adam, "It was a big farm, I remember, or maybe I'm exaggerating I dunno. Pasture, corn, I have one clear memory of a whole acre of okra in full bloom, milky white petals with the deep violet inside. Anyways it was a peach orchard on a hill a good ways back from the farm house. A little cart path crossed the creek past the corn field and curled around the hill. Up on top it flattened out and right in the middle was an old migrant shack that we used to play in. That was our favorite spot, you know, me and sis."
   "Kids grow up. Things change. I've seen it with my kids and my grandkids, acting strange when they hit that time. What happens? We were best friends, sister-brother, how could we do that? You know I used to think that when we was young, we each had a little bump down there, and then I grew out, you know, and then she grew in. I used to call it little mr. snake; I bet you can't believe that."
   Mrs. Jah nodded, "Yes actually it's pretty common for young boys to come up with funny names for their penises." Mrs Jah waited. Adam's hands, still interlocked, were shaking, but he kept going, slowly, taking deep breaths along the way.
   "We were so young, though. I don't even know if Eve had had her flow yet. Neither of us know our real age. We just make a guess. We had been swimming in the creek where it bends by the hill and gets deeper, a little past the ford for the cart path. She ran on up ahead to the shack. I told her I was gonna skip some rocks, but really I wanted to play with mr snake a minute. I guess it had started to feel different. This time was even more different. It got real big real fast. I half ran half stumbled half in half out my overalls, up the hill into the shack. Eve was undressed drying off in the sun, her dress on the windowsill by the back door. It was like the first time I'd ever seen her. It was like a different person.
   "I remember saying, "What do I do with this?" And Eve said, "I think it goes in here." Then we were beside each other, standing up. We was the same height back then. I pushed and she pulled. We barely went in, ya know not even one time; it hurt her. But all the touching felt good to me. The stuff started coming out in waves I couldn't control all on her stomach and thighs and right then Mama El comes in with a pitcher of sweet tea and three glasses. How could we not have heard her? I remember those drinking glasses so clearly. Blue glass, painted with little golden angels carrying swords and blowing trumpets."
   "Her face was so sad, so heavy, I never seen such a lonely face, like we had put the weight of the whole world on her shoulders. Now that I've had my own children, sometimes, I think, maybe she was just sad that we had grown up. I wish more than anything I could talk to her."
   "You could see the tears coming. 'Dear children," she said, but before she could finish we ran out the back door, fast as we could down the cart path, past the house, past the front pasture, crossed the road, down into the little pine forest, both of us crying. It was like we couldn't think straight, couldn't remember nothing. Sis clutching her dress that Mama El made and that little towel, me carrying my overalls. The first night we slept in a cabin, I guess maybe a hunter's cabin, but something inside of us kept telling us to go, go, run away, run away.
   "We came to a town; stole some food. We made up stories about who we were. Then another town. One thing after another. But, but that orchard shack. That look on Mama's face. That feeling we felt, that we had to keep running away. Keep staying away." Adam let out a deep breath, hands still folded, rubbing one thumb with the other, and bowed his head. He sprinkled a few tears onto his loafers.
   Mrs. Jah sat in silence with Adam for a couple minutes while he shook his bowed head, rubbing his thumbs. "That is a lot to share, Mr. Eden. That is a heavy story to carry around for so long. We can end our session now - we are just past an hour - and schedule you for next week."
   Adam nodded, "Yes, thank you." He lifted his head up and gulped in some air. Another sigh. "Yes, thank you," he repeated. "Next Wednesday I'm taking off work to go fishing with Seth and Lily and the kids up at the lake. Just a little day trip. Could we schedule for Thursday afternoon."
   Mrs. Jah, "Let me check...yes Thursday at five? Okay see you then."