Our Private Eden: Family

This is entirely a work of fiction.

This is the final installment in the "Private Eden" trilogy.

All characters presented in this narrative are over the age of 18.

To every Holly and Corey, wherever you are, whatever your names and dreams may be.

Our Private Eden: Beginnings

By Royce F. Houton

Holly and I had put in more than 1,000 miles on our Gulf Coast getaway - a week of sun, sand and surf, much of it spent frolicking in various states of undress along a secluded stretch of Alabama beach.

Among our discoveries was that we embraced the idea of impending parenthood far more swiftly and fully than we might have imagined when Dr. Finis Foster informed Holly of the pregnancy she believed was impossible on one life-changing morning in Memphis.

We also discovered that sex in the surf is not as much fun as Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr made it seem in "From Here to Eternity." We spent days picking sand from our private parts.

But we returned happy, relaxed, comfortable about our future together, and lacking tan lines after days of freely roaming nude in the sun on vast expanses of deserted beach, visible only to an occasional shrimp boat half a mile or more out in the Gulf.

I had planned to drive to Kansas City in mid-October to introduce Holly to my parents, but I felt that recent developments had made it imperative to expedite things. I had already told mom and dad about our engagement. But the rest of the story was something I believed was best told in person.

So no sooner had we returned to Van Buren on September 25th, we decided to hit the road again two days later - long enough to rest up and run a load of laundry - north toward Excelsior Springs, just northeast of Kansas City. I had only given mom and dad a day's notice of our arrival.

Holly's hair was a wind-tousled mop of strawberry-gold curls from our five-hour, open-air drive on a storybook fall day with the Mustang's top down. That and the blush on her face - perhaps from the wind, maybe from the new life gestating within her - gave her a fresh vitality that enchanted both of my parents.

"Mom, dad - meet Holly Raymer, soon to be your daughter-in-law," I said as they came outside to greet us.

Holly embraced my mother and father as though she had known them for a lifetime, unreservedly and without hesitation. Mom gushed over the new ring on her finger. Dad appraised it with equal appreciation, noting its symmetry to the one he gave my mom more than 40 years earlier that still glitters on the third finger of her left hand.

It was shortly after 4 in the afternoon on a Tuesday, and I grabbed our bags and began taking them upstairs to the second floor.

"Corey, the guest room is ready for you two if that's OK. Thought your old twin bed might be a tad tight for the both of you," she said. That was huge for mom, the proper, church-raised daughter of a southern parson and alumna of the women-only Mary Baldwin College in Staunton, Virginia. I was grateful for not having to have that moment of determining whether my parents would be OK with me sharing a bed under their roof with my fiancée. I exhaled a sigh of relief.

Holly asked for a few minutes to freshen up before joining mom and dad on the rambling porch outside for conversation and, most likely, dad's customary happy hour sip of Maker's Mark. She had washed her face, changed out of her shorts into jeans, removed the bra that had been biting into her chest for hours and gave the girls some breathing room beneath my baggy, blue Kansas Jayhawks hooded fleece sweatshirt. I waited for her inside and, together, we joined mom and dad on the porch.

"Holly, I don't know if you're partial to Kentucky sippin' whiskey. We also have wine, beer, whatever you want," dad told Holly as he broke the red wax seal on the bottle of bourbon. Four sturdy glass tumblers containing two square cubes of ice each awaited on a small table in the midst of the four rocking chairs.

"I do enjoy Kentucky and Tennessee whiskey, but I think I'll just have ginger ale or 7-Up for now if you have it," she said.

"I'll be right back," dad said. He returned with a can of Schweppes ginger ale and poured it over ice in her glass before pouring Maker's Mark over the rocks in two other glasses. I stopped him before he poured a third for me. I noticed a curious look on mom's face.

"I think I'll just share ginger ale with Holly for now," I said.

Dad cocked his head toward me.

"Never known you to turn down a pour of Maker's since you went off to college, son. You getting soft in your old age?" he said.

It was time.

"Nah. I just don't want to drink booze in front of my bride-to-be when she can't have it."

Dad's expression grew more puzzled, but mom grasped it instantly. Her jaw dropped and her eyes widened.

"You're... " mom gasped, her eyes darting back and forth from my face to Holly's. I held Holly's hand.

"We are. Mom, dad, you'll be grandparents again sometime in March," I said. My sister, Nell, two years my junior, already had a young son and daughter..

Mom squealed. A smile creased my father's face.

"But... how?" mom said, recalling that I had said Holly could not have children, or so she had been told.

"The usual way," I deadpanned. Mom blushed and giggled nervously, realizing after she said them how silly her words sounded.

"I know what you mean, mom. It came as a shock to us, too, when a doctor at Baptist Hospital in Memphis diagnosed her condition during a stop on our drive to the Gulf Shores. But we quickly realized that this was as rich a blessing as meeting each other had been. I had planned to propose the next week at the beach. The ring I'd bought at Handler's Jewelry downtown last time I was here was hidden in my luggage for that purpose. I just moved things up a few days and proposed the evening after we learned Holly is expecting. It happened at sunset in Tom Lee Park," I said. "Thought you'd appreciate that touch, mom."

Mom got up and hugged Holly a good long while. Dad was more reserved, just smiling as he watched mom and Holly have their moment.

"I'm not waiting for a wedding. Holly, in our eyes, you are our daughter," he said.

Those words hit Holly like a thunderclap. It had been more than eight years since anyone thought of Holly Raymer as a daughter, and what dad said melted her. He understood her reaction: I had told him how deeply she loved the devoted single father who had raised her after her mother abandoned them when she was a toddler.

"I didn't mean to fall apart like this," she sputtered, dabbing away tears.

"I'm a ball of emotions these days, as Corey can tell you. Didn't used to be this way, as he can also tell you. It's probably the hormones. But the fact is, I never seriously thought about falling in love, much less marrying. And I grew up believing I could never be a mom. Think about that: I don't have any reference for what a mom is, how to be a mom because mine...," she said, pausing to restore her composure.

"And I've missed my daddy so much these past eight years. He was all I had, the only man I ever trusted, the only constant I had known, the only real love in my life until Corey came along. So... I'm sorry."

Mom gazed peacefully at Holly, a kind smile on her face. She spoke slowly and deliberately.

"Holly, you never have to apologize for the pains of the past. Not here. Not to us. You're home. You're our family. This is your safe place, your sanctuary. My dear child... here you are loved," mom said in a calm, sweet voice - a reassuring mother's voice that Holly had not known in her living memory. Mom fell silent and let her words germinate.

There were moments like this when am convinced that mom channeled the best of her late father's healing nature, his inspired pastoral soul, the complete compassion and righteous wisdom of the Rev. Porter Moore. This was her finest moment.

I felt goosebumps on Holly's bare arm beneath the cardigan draped over her shoulders. Those words, as much as any ever spoken, welded my family of orientation to the family or procreation that Holly and I will be. I was speechless.

"Now y'all excuse me. I need to go see about dinner," mom said.

With that, she walked into the side door and toward the kitchen. Holly's eyes followed her.

"Wait for me, Mrs. Vaught. Let me help you," Holly said, trailing mom indoors.

"Call me Corinne, dear," mom said. "Mrs. Vaught was my mother-in-law."

I was alone with dad, outside in the early autumn gloaming.

"She's the one, son," he said, looking me in the eyes. "I prayed as the years went by that whoever she would be, that she'd intersect with your life someday and that you would know her when she did. It took a while, but you found each other and she's here. Holly is that part of you that you never even knew was missing until you met her."

I sat astonished, hearing from my father almost exactly the words I had said to Holly when I proposed to her, and I told him so.

"How could you know that, dad?"

The left corner of his mouth drew upward, almost imperceptibly, a half-smile that I had seen in rare moments like these when he was about to explain something complicated and profound, almost unknowable; simply, clearly and in few words.

"Corey, I knew that truth when I met your mother. I know it when I see it in our son."

●●●

The wedding was a simple, intimate event.

Holly and I exchanged our vows in the late afternoon of the second Saturday in October of 1977 in a small, white, wood-frame Presbyterian Church with a picturesque steeple in the Mark Twain National Forest about 20 miles from Van Buren. It stood off a narrow, crumbling blacktop road in a dale framed between two gentle mountains about two miles apart. Her grandfather's and great-grandfather's apple orchard that became our own little Eden on our first Saturday together in June was about a half mile down the same road. Her family's roots were deep in this church: her great-grandfather became its pastor at the age of 20 after serving in the Union Army during the Civil War. Her grandfather had been a deacon. It's where her dad brought her as a child - her hair pigtailed in ribbons and bows, according to old black-and-white snapshots - when they attended Sunday School and worship services.

Attendance was limited to a few family members, some intimate longtime friends and a string folk quartet that provided music for the ceremony in the chapel as well as the reception on the freshly mown church grounds afterward. All told, about 30 people.

Dad was my best man. Holly's friend since her kindergarten days, Emily Ann Crowther, was her maid of honor, and my older sister, Nell, and was a bridesmaid. Holly's cousin Arthur Raymer - the son of her father's brother and her closest living male relative - served in place of her dad and gave into the bonds of matrimony.

It was a mix of traditional vows - richer, poorer; better or worse; sickness and health; forsaking all others, et cetera, all prompted by the church's pastor - and the new. Holly and I both recited our own promises to each other, not so much words memorized but certainties etched on our hearts for months that flowed from us extemporaneously, perfect in their human imperfection.

As the sun dipped behind the mountain to the west and illuminated a canopy of magenta, gold and pink across the heavens, the string quartet - a violin, a guitar, a mandolin and a base - played sweet folk and bluegrass ballads. The lone variation was when the violinist, as if to prove her mettle, took on "The Devil Went Down to Georgia" with an ambitious fiddle solo and pulled it off superbly, vocals and instrumentation. Two years later, Charlie Daniels would take the same tune to the top of both rock and country music charts and earn millions from it.

The highlight, however, was the tune to which Holly and I had our first dance as husband and wife, a slow, folksy and romantic arrangement of "It Had To Be You," popularized by Billie Holliday and later Frank Sinatra. Played by a string ensemble steeped in bluegrass, it was a stretch to pull off the pop classic. The result was an arrangement of almost otherworldly beauty, its melody alternately carried by fiddle and guitar and kept afloat by a stand-up base and a dobro.

The song had become almost an anthem between us - a testament to our first meeting that sweltering Friday evening at Conway's, our relationship, our romance and, now, our family. It was something said offhand as we drove along Interstate 55 between Memphis and Jackson on our way to the Gulf, and I don't recall whether she said it first or I did. It didn't matter. At our next rest stop, I scoured my cassette collection and found a mix tape with the Holliday version of the song, popped it in and fast-forwarded to that track. Right there, we decided this would be our song. Now, as Holly and I held each other and swayed gently to the fiddle's poignant strains, we took turns singing the lyrics against the other's cheek in voices barely above a whisper, audible to no one else, shared only by us two.

The photos from that afternoon are breathtaking. Holly chose a local photographer whose pictures from the earliest years of the Vietnam War won a Pulitzer Prize for the Los Angeles Times in the mid-1960s before he retired to the tranquility of the southern Missouri Ozarks where he shot breathtaking wildlife photos he had recently published in a book. He did an occasional special event for pay if it interested him. Once she explained the rustic venue - a simple, antebellum church late in the afternoon in a scenic Ozark valley - the creative potential of the event and our consent to allow him to use selected shots for gallery exhibitions persuaded him to do the shoot for us.

My favorite shot shows Holly and me in our first dance. She is in her simple, white wedding dress, illuminated by the warm glow from rows of clear incandescent lights strung from poles over the outdoor reception area. The blazing sunset beyond gives the frame a dramatic timelessness and an enduring emotional charge. In the frame, she and I are just left of the center, encircled by the people dearest to us who are clearly enraptured by the moment. To the right of the frame is the quartet.

There was no bar, and that was intentional. There were far too many narrow, serpentine backroads through those hills for wedding guests with liquor under their belts to safely navigate. Besides, obtaining an on-premises liquor permit on church property inside federal park land in one of Missouri's most sparsely populated counties would have been red tape nightmare, particularly on short notice.

But mom and dad managed to bring in eight magnums of chilled champagne and enough flutes that all present could toast the newlywed couple. And the first toast, by dad, was equal to the moment.

"To my son, Corey, my new daughter, Holly, and the family they establish here today - a blessing to us all that God proves in this moment that he intended all along."

Holly even allowed herself a sip before discreetly handing the mostly full glass off to Emily Ann to finish.

Then, on mom's direction, the guests formed a corridor through which we marched, in a shower of rice, to a waiting chauffeured black Cadillac that would drive Holly and me to the grand Chase Park Plaza Hotel in St. Louis. The next morning, we would fly to New York City for a brief honeymoon getaway and a Broadway play or two.

But this was our wedding night, a moment we would never forget. As the limo pulled away from the tiny country church on our three-hour ride through the Missouri darkness to St. Louis, the excitement and adrenaline of the day began to ebb, and the realization that we were now a family in the eyes of both the Lord and the law sank in. The chauffeur raised the tinted glass privacy partition separating the front seat and the expansive rear seat, and we put it to its best use: we fell asleep in each other's arms and would stay that way until we hit the lights and noises of downtown St. Louis.

●●●

For the second time in a month, Holly and I undressed each other in the penthouse bridal suite of a luxury hotel in front of a window with an expansive view of the Mississippi River below. I had carried her over the threshold of the suite's door, kindly held open by a Chase Park Plaza bell captain who had the situational awareness to immediately excuse himself and lock the door behind him.

There, on the plush Egyptian cotton sheets in a room illuminated only by tapers that were discreetly lit as we checked in downstairs, we slowly, tenderly, sweetly made love inside the sanction of wedlock for the first time. An hour of leisurely sex later, Holly achieved a long climax followed by mine. Where groans and moans and grunts often marked those moments, on this night whispered professions of love took their place. We fell asleep face-to-face shortly afterward, our arms and legs entangled and woke the same way when the Sunday morning sun began to flood our suite.

At check-in the previous evening, we had asked the desk clerk to schedule our in-room breakfast of eggs Benedict for 10 a.m. We quickly abandoned preliminary mid-morning foreplay and scrambled to find our bathrobes when room service tapped on the door at precisely that hour. We dined naked in bed and picked up our erotic teasing after clearing the trays off the bed. Two frenzied orgasms and 40 minutes later, we scurried to rinse the fuck musk off ourselves, dress and catch our 1:30 p.m. flight to New York.

I gave Holly the window seat on the left side of the first-class cabin. She had never been to New York, and I wanted her to have an opportunity to see it first from the air, depending on the weather and the plane's approach. As I hoped, the jet began its descent near Philadelphia, meaning it would swoop low over suburban New Jersey, close enough to the Hudson River that Holly could see landmarks she had glimpsed only on television or magazines: the Empire State Building, the Chrysler Building, the new World Trade Center towers in Manhattan, maybe the Statue of Liberty before the plane banked left over the bay, completing its 180-degree turn over Coney Island and southern Long Island before descending over Brooklyn and Queens, affording Holly a view of Manhattan from the east before dipping down into LaGuardia.

Her face beamed with childlike mirth at the cityscape beneath her as the jet took its last dip earthward and its tires screeched on the concrete runway.

She found charm everywhere in the city that never sleeps. The bulbous, old yellow Medallion taxi cabs that outnumbered private passenger cars and buses. The ubiquitous massive billboards and lights that blazed day and night in Times Square, the towers that made Manhattan's streets feel like deep, narrow canyons, the vastness of Central Park in the midst of it all and the opulence of the Plaza Hotel. She was Dorothy taking in every square foot of the Emerald City of Oz. We didn't have the bridal suite - not at the Plaza - but our room on the 18th floor afforded a view of Central Park near the penthouses of the rich and famous along Fifth Avenue.

Our first night we feasted along Mulberry Street in Little Italy - drinks in one café, entrees in another, tiramisu and espresso in a third. On the way back, we asked the cabbie to let us out as we passed by Rockefeller Center and we took in the sights. By the time the doorman welcomed us back to the Plaza, it was half past midnight, yet it felt we had only been gone an hour or two, not five.

Holly had two requests for Broadway shows: "Man of La Mancha," the musicalized story of the deluded knight, Don Quixote, playing at the Palace Theatre, and "Hair," the riotous rock opera in the eighth year of its original run from 1969, the year its nude cast scandalized Broadway even during and the Summer of Love and Woodstock. It was playing at the Biltmore Theater. Those filled our second and third evenings.