Gates of Eden

Prologue

Greenwich Village

Spring, 1970

The explosion raised the townhouse roof off its top-story plate. It blew out every rippled, 19th century windowpane from cellar to atrium. Walls collapsed. Broken glass cascaded from hundreds of windows across the street. With a shriek of pulled carpenter's pegs and splintered wood, beams that had supported the structure for more than a century followed the bricks into the basement.

Two smaller blasts blew the rubble upward. Flames darted from a fractured gas main and licked at shredded drapery and the splintered ends of plaster lath. Water hissed from ruptured plumbing.

Neighbors opened doors. Some stood rooted in the sanctuary of their doorways while others descended their first steps and approached the wreckage. They moved cautiously, wary of what might happen next. Less than a minute had elapsed since the first detonation.

A young woman stumbled through billows of brick dust, water spray, and smoke. Naked and barefoot, dripping with bath water, she crouched like an animal, picking her way along the splintered ledge that was all that remained of the living-room floor. She emerged, her close-cropped hair caked with plaster dust, her face and torso bleeding from a myriad of tiny pricks.

A neighbor, a sturdy woman with iron-gray hair threw a plaid blanket around the young woman’s shoulders, guided her through the rubble that littered the sidewalk, and ushered her into her own home. "Are you all right?"

The young woman covered her eyes and sat down on a chair in the foyer of the elegant old house. She was trembling and her feet were bleeding.

The neighbor hurried into the kitchen, returning with a tumbler full of water. "Drink this," she said. "I’ll call the police."

The young woman lifted the glass with both hands and drank like a child.

Back in the kitchen, the neighbor dialed frantically and waited through an interminable number of rings. Sirens wailed in the distance.

“Precinct.”

The voice sounded bored. Didn’t they know? "There's been an explosion," she whispered. "A serious explosion. And please…send an ambula…"

"You on West Eleventh?" the voice asked.

"Yes, yes, I…"

"Believe me, lady, we know all about it." A dial tone replaced the voice. The neighbor hung up and turned to tend to her charge, but the young woman was gone.  A string of bloody footprints trailed down the blue-carpeted hallway and disappeared out the back door.

* * *

Part One

The Inherited World

Michael Friedman

Madeline Singer

New York

September, 1960

Guitar players, banjo pickers, fiddlers, mandolin pluckers, autoharp strummers, and a guy with a washtub bass gathered every Sunday afternoon by the fountain in Washington Square Park to play old Appalachian ballads and mountain reels, Texas country blues, Mississippi rags, and Arkansas hollers. Sunday afternoon in Washington Square Park was not just for folkies. A man in a brown suit with a fedora walked a Corgie on a leash. Cold-eyed teenagers from the Bronx watched the action with sarcasm. Boys from NYU cruised Capri-clad Italian girls from the neighborhood, old Polish women sunned themselves, their stockings rolled below the knee. Around the back of the fountain, two young men in jeans and t-shirts leaned into each other with undisguised infatuation, fingering each other’s crucifixes.

Michael Friedman loved the lyrics of the songs they played in Washington Square Park. He had never gone out on strike or laid down a deputy with a log chain; nor had he ever murdered a pretty little girl on the banks of the Ohio or dug in the dark dungeons of a coal mine. But the tunes and their lyrics transported him out of the claustrophobic, steam-heated, career-obsessed, martini-driven, roast-beef bloody, private-school shelter his parents had created on the tenth floor of a Riverside Drive apartment building. The songs carried him to another America, where he caught a glimpse of a more authentic world.

The folkie players spun in a slow-moving galaxy before the fountain. Where they stood depended on their abilities. A nod from the core group and you took a step toward the center of the spiral. Players who didn’t know the chord changes, played too loud, or couldn’t keep up were banished to the outer edge by the turn of a shoulder. A devout audience gathered at the fringes, listening.

All summer, Michael had lugged his guitar downtown on the subway, blue work shirt rolled up to his biceps, baggy dungarees and work boots signaling his intent to be mistaken for a ramblin’ man who just got into town. He never took the guitar out of its case, but watching the players every Sunday inspired him to learn the chord changes, the finger-picking patterns, and lyrics to dozens of tunes—in his bedroom. Tomorrow, school began; he was determined to play with the Washington Square folkies before school started.

The musicians were picking their way through “Freight Train.” Michael knew the tune. Hands shaking, he pulled his guitar out of the cardboard case and joined the circle. Verse by verse, he worked inward until he was surrounded by the wash of other instruments. The banjo player nodded encouragement until the band finished with a ragged flourish.

The crowd of onlookers applauded; the musicians scratched, stretched, and shifted as if no one was there. The banjo player noodled the melody of the next tune while a gallon bottle of wine floated from mouth to mouth.

A young woman carried on the applause longer than the others. She sat on the foot-worn cobbles, her hip wedged against the curve of the washtub, hugging her dungareed knees. Like Michael, she wore a men’s blue work shirt. A small, spiral-bound notebook poked out of her left breast pocket. A yellow pencil nestled in a ponytail, and a dime winked out of the slot of her left loafer. She looked up at him with dark brown eyes. “Hey. You’re pretty good.”

He gawked at the girl at his feet. A sphere of curly black hair rebelled against the pony tail, cascading long ringlets down around her baby-smooth features. An olive-skinned shoulder disappeared under her shirt. She was more than pretty. She was beautiful in a grown-up, scary, exotic kind-of way. She must really get around, he thought.

A guitarist in a cape, his blue jeans stuffed carelessly into his boot-tops, stepped into the circle. Michael recognized him as a regular at the Café Figaro and the Village Gate. He gave way, standing opposite so that he could watch the older musician’s fingers. The banjo player turned his back and closed Michael out of the circle. That was it. He had been axed.

“Don’t let those guys get you down.” The girl got up and pulled out her notebook. He felt warm-headed and flushed from the wine.

“What’s your name?”

“Uh, Michael.” He extended his hand.

Her pencil remained poised. “I mean your whole name, dumbie.”

“Michael Friedman. F-R-I-E…”

“I know how to spell it.” She scribbled, not looking up.

“What’re you writing my name down for?” he asked.

“Who knows? Maybe you’ll get famous. Besides, I’m writing a story about Washington Square Park.”

“You mean, like a novel?”

“No. It’s just a story. For the school paper.”

“Hey,” Michael said. That’s really cool.”

She twitched in her loafers, looking up at him with a slightly bemused smile that said, “And? So…?”

“So, uh…” Michael felt uncomfortable with the silence. Maybe he was acting like a jerk. “What’s your name?”

“Madeline.”

“Wow,” Michael said. “That’s French, isn’t it?”

“Oui.” She fluttered her long eyelashes in faux flirtation. “Tres sophistiqué, non? My parents named me after this French girl in a kid’s book, but I think it’s sexy, don’t you?”

“Sure.” He blushed again, a fool with his guitar hanging out. He retreated to the park bench where he had left his guitar case.

“So…how long have you been playing?” she asked, moving with him.

“I started last winter.”

“You’re kidding me!”

“But mostly I been playing alone. You know, with books and records. This was the first time I…”

“The first time? You really are good.” She drifted lazily beside him, half rolling out of her loafers. “Keep an eye out for them, though.”

“Who?”

“Hank, Gino, all those guys. They’re put-down artists. And they don’t like guys who’re better than them.”

“I’m not better than they are.”

“Maybe not yet. But you will be.”

Michael shrugged. “Better’n them? Naaah.” He pulled his guitar case out from under the green-painted slats.

“I been watchin’ that for ya, sonny.” An old man sat on the bench, scratching his whiskers with a toothpick. “Should be worth somethin’, shouldn’t it?”

Michael dug out a quarter and gave it to the bum.

“Pretty gal you got there.”

“I’m not his ‘gal’.”

“Well, gawddam, sonny.” The bum cackled through his gums. “You got yourself a tiger by the tail, doncha now.” He pocketed the quarter and disappeared.

“You gonna be at the Wha? tomorrow night?” she asked.

“The what?”

“Mondays is jam night at the Café Wha?. You know, Macdougal Street.”

“I know where the Wha? is,” he said.

“Then come on down. You should play.”

“Play? Jeez. I dunno. I got a lot of homew...”

“I’m gonna be there.” She rocked back and forth in her loafers, hands in the back pockets of her jeans. “I got homework, too, ya know.”

“Uh, maybe.” He edged away, caught between his reluctance to leave the orb of her attention and his need to report home.

She stood in the middle of the path, smiling. “That was a nice thing you did back there, giving that bum a handout.”

“Poor people got to live, too,” he said.

“I know that,” She replied. “What do you think…I was born yesterday?” She punched him lightly on the arm and strolled back toward the knot of musicians.

*  *  *

Louis Guillory

Washington, D.C.

May, 1961

Sheltered by the egg-and-coffee smell of the Howard University student union cafeteria, Louis huddled over an open copy of the Washington Post. On the front page, a Greyhound bus sat abandoned on a highway shoulder, tires flattened, flames bursting from broken windows.

“Why didn’t they fight back?” Louis’s roommate, Sonny took a slug from his soda.

“They’re not supposed to,” Louis said, his eyes stuck to the image.

“Yeah? So what are they supposed to do?”

“Turn the other cheek,” Louis said.

“And get their heads kicked in,” Sonny added. “Since when does fighting for equality mean sitting around and letting somebody kill you?” He bit into an apple. “Them people are fools,” he scoffed. “Alabama. Shit. That place’s never gonna change. You just thank your lucky stars you’re sittin’ up here in Philly, gettin’ a store-bought education.” He pointed the white apple core at Louis’s chest. “A college education,” he garbled, mouth full. “Put on a suit and show whitey that you can do anything he can. That’s how to fight for equality, brother.”

“Those people put their lives on the line. For all of us.” Louis pushed his plate away. “I can’t sit here and do nothing.”

*

“You can’t sit where and do nothing?” Diane Thomas frowned into the phone at the Nashville office of the Congress of Racial Equality. She contradicted her own demure manner with forceful gestures and a clear, strong voice. “Howard University!” Half amused, she remained on the line. “Isn’t it final exam time up there?”

“Never mind that,” Louis shouted into the phone. “After I saw those photos…that burnt out bus, those two men beaten…”

“There’s been photos in the Northern press?”

“In The Post—that’s the big paper up here in Washington.”

“I know The Washington Post, young man. I’m in Nashville, not Lagos.”

“A picture of a Greyhound bus. Right on the front page. The bus was on fire, windows broken, smoke everywhere.”

“Thank goodness, they are paying attention.”

“After that, I just couldn’t study anymore.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning, I want to join the Freedom Riders.”

“I’m sorry Mr.…”

“Guillory.”

“Guillory. We’re only taking people who’ve been trained.”

“For what?”

“Non-violence.”

“What’s there to learn?”

“If you don’t know, you shouldn’t come, young man.”

“I’ll drop my studies, anything…”

“I admire your enthusiasm,” Diane said. “But as you can see, this is going to be a dangerous, possibly bloody expedition. And now they know we’re coming.” She avoided mentioning the prospect that they could be killed. “Do we know how you will respond? No. Do you know how you will respond?”

“I can take of myself.”

“I’m sure you can. But this is a movement of people. We work together. We need to know one another. We don’t know you. Come work with us this summer.”

“I need to do this now.”

“I’m afraid your personal needs aren’t of paramount importance. I’m sorry.” She hung up. If only she had more time, she, Diane Thomas, would like to find what kind of a soul lay behind that brash, desperate voice.

*   *   *

Connie Moore

Middleton, Massachusetts

May, 1961

Connie Moore could not read the names of the actors through the blur of her tears. The tranquil blues of the Mediterranean Sea washed across the screen. She hooked her bra, pulled down her sweater, cranked open the window of Eddie Carpenter’s ‘50 Chevy, and lifted the speaker off the glass. She stood outside, breathed the cool, fresh air, and stretched. The words of the finale blared through dozens of tinny speakers.

This land / is mine,

God gave this land to me.

They had been watching “Exodus,” the moving Technicolor epic of Jewish relocation, Palestinian loss and betrayal, and British cruelty, suspended upon a breast-heaving undercurrent of Romeo and Juliet. He groped, she nuzzled, her attention caught by the riveting world that unfolded on the screen.

The night air cooled her tears. In the car, Eddie sprawled in the passenger seat, crumbs of popcorn littering his chest. She looked down at his profile, the strong straight lines of his forehead, nose, and jaw showing through the last vestiges of adolescent pudginess, handsome and goofy, with his crew cut and popcorn mess. His t-shirt gleamed in the dark, a phosphorescent triangle of white glowing from the top of his v-neck sweater.

The film had left her with a deep longing, an ache that had become as familiar as the dark pines that surrounded drive-in. She longed to be gone, not from sweet Eddie, but from the sheltered confines of her existence.

She had begun concocting a life for herself that dazzled with hope. She was good at languages, straight “A’s” in Latin and French. She would train as an interpreter for the United Nations—after four years of college, of course. She would travel to Paris and Luxembourg and Istanbul, where she would translate important conversations, conversations that would help feed the starving children of Asia and Africa. President John F. Kennedy had said it was time for that.

She would live in elegant old hotels, wear short hair under a beret and slacks under a trench coat. She would translate for diplomats and write descriptions of her work for magazines like “Redbook” and “Seventeen” and maybe even “The New Yorker.” The people of America needed to be made aware of the suffering in the world.

“Let’s go down to Dominic’s and get a meatball sandwich.” Eddie pushed the starter pedal on the Chevy. “I’m wicked hungry.”

She pictured the gang crowded into the red leatherette booths at Domenic’s. She heard the jukebox blaring, the smiling, made-up faces watching hers, knowing they’d been at the drive-in, pawing at each but not—of course—going “all the way.” Good girls knew what other good girls did—and didn’t do. There were no secrets at Middleton High.

“Let’s not go there,” she said, climbing into the passenger seat. “Let’s go out driving. Someplace where we can just sit.”

“Okay. Sure.” He was hungry, but he was getting used to the impetuous desires of the good-looking girl who sat beside him. With her clean, sandy hair and tiny features, she still smelled of soap, even after all that groping. “Anything you say, Queenie.”

They drove down Nashoba Road, the elms and maples arching over them. A birch tree flared yellow in their headlights, standing out against the autumn reds and browns of oaks and maples. It had been an Indian summer week—warm, still, blue-skied days and cold, sharp nights. The day-to-night fluctuations in temperature had whipped the foliage into a riot of colors.

“That was such a sad story,” she said. “All those people struggling to get to their homeland.”

“Guess that goes to show ya…There’s no place like home.”

He switched on the radio. Instead of the usual rockabilly single or doo wop ballad, a man with a phony Mexican accent was talking with a straight man who was playing the part of a radio announcer. “So, José,” the announcer said. “What’s it like to blast off with those rockets shooting you into the stratosphere?”

“Scaary,” the phony accent replied. “Reeelly, reeelly scaary.” The crowd laughed and Connie twisted the knob.

“Those stupid astronaut records,” she said. “Why do people think they’re funny?”

“This guy, he’s supposed to be a big hero but instead, he’s a big chicken. That’s kinda funny, doncha think?”

“It’s not right to make fun of Mexicans.” She folded her arms across her sweater. “Or anybody else, either. That’s what the Germans did to the Jewish people.”

“Oh come on,” Eddie said. “You gotta laugh at something. You take everything so darned serious.” He pronounced ‘darned’ as if it had no ‘r.’

“I don’t take you serious, do I?” she asked.

“I hope not.” he grinned.

“You’re funny,” she said, and brushed her hand lightly over his standup hair. “Cute and funny.”

“Fuckin’ ‘A’,” he said. “And a real lady killer.”

“And conceited,” she said.

Connie felt safe with Eddie Carpenter. He was easy to play with, not like the other boys, so full of defenses and postures. Still, she was surprised by her affection for him. He wasn’t passionate about the same things. He didn’t want to live in Paris, and he wasn’t concerned about the plight of African children. She had learned not to expect that from her friends at Middleton High. What mattered was that he had an honesty about him. He was different.

Her father was an electronics engineer who drove off every morning to work in a pristine laboratory hidden in the trees of a genteel Boston suburb. She lived in a two-story colonial structure that had stood witness to the Revolutionary War. She was an only child, the sole object of her parents’ care and concern and it was a given that she was going to college.

By contrast, Eddie’s life was up for grabs. His father was a locksmith, a sad, quiet French Canadian who owned a small, dark lock shop in Somerville. Eddie lived with seven brothers and sisters in a tiny, one-story house covered with fake tarpaper bricks. His father had tacked on extra rooms as each new child was born. Eddie and his siblings scrapped with each other endlessly like puppies while his father moved from room to tiny room like a zombie, rising from the flowered easy chair, peering into the refrigerator, standing over the toilet, then floating back to the easy chair, recycling an endless stream of coffee, beer, and vanilla cream soda, which he called “tonic.”

Eddie’s mother worked nights for New England Bell as a telephone operator. During the day, she sat at the kitchen table, taut and irritable with fatigue, smoking Marlboros and drinking endless cups of instant coffee while she ordered her daughters through a litany of chores. The kitchen smelled perennially of home permanents, cigarette smoke, and tomato sauce.

The one time Connie visited Eddie in his home, he seemed loud and physical, and his language was peppered with evocations of Jesus, Joseph, and Mary. At school, he was quiet, almost bashful, screening his thoughts and feelings behind a little grin. In the cruelty of high school culture, he stood alone, smiling easily, running with the pack during good times and cutting himself off from the mean-spirited anxieties that would often lure their classmates into taunting, gossiping cliques. He had a sense of fairness that hung on him with a gentle stability that no bully could disturb.

“Look,” she said, turning in her seat. A full moon traveled over the passing treetops, grazing the forested hump of Mount Monadnock. “Let’s find a place where we can walk in the moonlight, before it disappears.”

She wanted to hold onto the feelings of the movie. Those refugees jammed in the tramp steamer, escaping their pasts, fleeing over the sun-seared Mediterranean to Israel. The arid landscape excited her as well, moved her to wonder if she didn’t have ancestors who once roamed the desert. The heat and sensuality of the dunes, the clamor of the market place, the suspense of Exodus’ shipboard intrigue pulled at her like a magnet. To Connie, the world had grown sad and glorious and exciting all at the same time.

“Isn’t it neat, thinking about graduating and going someplace else?” she said. “I can’t wait.”

“What’s wrong with this place?” he asked. “I like it here.”

The road climbed up the side of Nashoba Notch. An apple orchard, perched on the steep hillside, soaked up the light from the descending moon. A stone wall, covered with moss and new, spring blackberry vines, tumbled along the pasture beside them. She rolled down the window and smelled the air. The fragrance of moist earth and a remembrance of warmth hung in her nostrils.

“Nothing’s wrong with it,” she said. “But I feel like it’s now or never, Eddie. For life, I mean. Going places. Meeting people. Doing some good in the world…like those people did.”

“Jeez, you’re the philosopher today,” he said.

“The birches look like ghosts.”

“Oh, so now you’re the poet, too.” He giggled. “Your feet show it. They’re Longfellows.”

“You’re corny.” She hit him on the bicep.

He rolled the Chevy to a stop by the stone wall. The hillside was bathed in moonlight, every detail outlined in the clear spring air. A herd of Holsteins grazed on the other side of the orchard. A malingering crow called to its partner and a dog yipped from a barnyard beyond the ridge.

She got out of the car. With the broad images of the movie still running through her mind, she felt pulled by a million thoughts and yearnings. It was time! The last year of school, the cloistering comfort of her parents’ home, the monotonous beauty of the little town she had known since childhood, the swirl of the world situation, all fought with the images of the Mediterranean and the desert, the handsome young president, the megaton bombs, the Peace Corps, the first man in space, fallout shelters, the Bay of Pigs, the Berlin Wall, and now, the brave Freedom Riders. Everything scared and excited her, made her want to hide or fly forward, sleep forever or live life, get things done, before it was too late, before it was all over.

“You know, what?” she asked through the open door. “We have to think about these things…”

He stayed put in the driver’s seat. “What things?”

“We’ve got the biggest bombs the world has ever seen. So do the Russians. The president wants us to build fallout shelters! The next minute, he wants us to help people in Africa!” She stared at the moon, her voice distant with meditation. “I mean, what are we supposed to do?”

He stretched, took a swig out of his pint of Southern Comfort. On the way to the drive in, he had stopped at Gregoire’s package store on Stowe Road. The guy there would sell a kid a pint or a case of Black Label if nobody else was around. Eddie got out of the car and leaned against the Chevy’s fender. The engine ticked as it cooled in the quiet night. “I bet you’re going to fix all that,” he said. “Workin’ at the United Nations.”

“Well I want to,” she said. “But I get the feeling we’re running out of time. Bomb shelters.” She looked out over the orchard. This might be the end. What if nuclear disaster or some other dark catastrophe lay ahead of them, cruelly heedless of their dreams or personal destinies? And…What if they denied themselves that one thing, that mystery, so dangerous, so beautiful, so scary, so exciting? “Eddie.”

“Yeah?”

”Will you go all the way with me?”

“Huh?”

“With the world the way it is now, we could miss out on something if we don’t hurry,” she said.

“All the way?” He shifted uncomfortably. “But, uh, we never…”

“That’s what I mean,” she insisted. “All of these terrible things are happening. What if we don’t experience life to the fullest?”

“Wow. But I…”

“What,” she said, scared by his hesitation. “Don’t you want to?”

“Well, sure I do,” he said. “It’s just that I…” He studied the cows, took another hit from his pint, and looked at her with the eyes of a twelve-year-old. “I kinda gave up on bringin’ a rubber.”

“That’s okay,” she said, jamming her hands in her jeans pockets. “I have one.”

“Jeez, Connie” he said. “You do?”

“Just in case.”

“Jeez.” He looked down at the little figure standing before him, shoulders squared in her sweater, arms stiff, hands jammed into her pockets.

“I’m not a professional virgin or anything,” she said. “I’m almost seventeen, you know. Besides,” she said, “I knew we’d do it some time.”

After all she had heard about doing it, this was the first time she had actually contemplated going through with it. It was scary, but she could not fight off her own sense of urgency. Besides, the air was cold and it would be warm in the Chevy. He looked scared and incredulous but he was already walking around to the driver’s seat.

“Wait a minute,” she said. “We should get into the back. You know, for more room.”

“O-okay,” he said. “Only tractors come by here anyways.” He giggled as he climbed into the back seat. “Doubt if anybody’s gonna be out hayin’ tonight.”

Trembling with fear and excitement, she let the darkness surround her. She handed Eddie the tinfoil packet and opened her heart to the swelling chords of the Exodus theme song. Her sweetheart came to her smelling of Brylcreem, Southern Comfort, and hot-buttered popcorn.

* * *