The Three Miss Margarets

by Louise Shaffer

  “Tell me why you don’t like them.” If he knew anything about her connection to them, he wouldn’t ask that. Or would he?

  “They’re from the right side of the tracks. I’m poor white trash.”

  “I thought poor white trash was fashionable these days.”

  “Not to women like the three Miss Margarets.”

  “In that case I can see why you’d resent them.”

  “No resenting to it. I just see them clear.”

  “Tell me.” He thought she was funny and he was enjoying her. She could swear he wasn’t trying to play her. She could almost swear it.

  “When the three Miss Margarets were younger they got a reputation for being a lot better than they were because they did a lot of good deeds that never inconvenienced them,” she said. “Now that they’re old, mostly they just hang out on Miss Li’l Bit’s front porch and believe their own press.”

  He leaned back, tilting his chair, and hooked a bare foot on the rung of the one in front of him for balance. He had slim feet with straight toes and high arches. “So it’s an honesty thing with you?”

  She had a quick flash of her ma yelling, “Those old bitches lied. I know they lied!”

  “What did they do to you?” he asked. If he knew, he was the greatest actor on the planet.

  “They never did anything to me. We were talking generally. Is this interrogation over?”

  “Nah. Tell me about the Garrison family.”

  “You’re staying at the lodge at Garrison Gardens, right? Well, there’s a brochure under the Bible on your nightstand with a picture of Miss Lucy Garrison’s chapel on the front. It’ll tell you all about the family.”

  “But I want to hear it from you,” he said, smiling, like he was settling in for a really good show and knew he wasn’t going to be disappointed.

  She wondered if he knew how sexy all that attention was and decided yes indeedy, any man who strutted his stuff the way Josh did knew exactly how sexy he was. Which didn’t diminish his sexiness. So what with one thing and another, she decided to hell with her warning bells. It was probably just a coincidence that he had picked her up, and she wasn’t going to ask him about it. It wouldn’t be the first time she’d decided to trust a man for reasons that had little to do with her better judgment.

  “OKAY,” LAUREL BEGAN, “this is the version of the Garrison legend you won’t get from the tour guides at the Gardens. Your big hotel started out in the twenties as a private lodge for the Garrisons to entertain their friends—many of whom were the financial barons who brought us the Great Depression, incidentally, but we don’t mention that around here. The original lodge was a rustic retreat where the Garrisons entertained in simple style and demonstrated to the world what humble Christian folk they were. Then the Depression hit and local farmers started going belly-up. The Garrisons sent out their agents to buy up the farmers’ land for a fraction of what it was worth, business being business after all, and to hell with all that subversive Commie stuff in the Bible about being your brother’s keeper.”

  It was a soapbox she’d been on before, but no man had ever looked quite so fascinated while she was on it.

  “By the time the Depression was over, the Garrison family had collected thirty thousand acres that used to be homes and farms. Somebody got the idea that the private lodge could turn a profit if it became a resort. For reasons having to do with the government’s unreasonable application of the income tax, the Garrison accountants tucked most of the newly acquired land into a charitable trust that was to be used in a manner loosely described as being for the public good. Several golf courses were put in, and facilities were built to house an annual steeplechase that put Charles Valley on the map worldwide. How this benefited the public was never made clear; the golf courses were kept private, and tickets for the steeplechase cost as much as the average family earned in six months. But these goodies made the resort into one hell of a draw for the exclusive clientele the Garrisons wanted. Are you with me so far?” Josh’s pale eyes were warm; by now Ed’s would have glazed over.

  “Oh, yeah, you’re very clear,” Josh said softly. “You deliver this riff often?”

  “Only to total strangers who will soon be leaving town.”

  “Smart move. Go on.”

  “The land that was not developed reverted back to forest and became hunting grounds for resort guests and Garrison family and friends. The farmers watched the rich people play on what had once been their cotton and sweet-potato fields and tried to tell themselves they were grateful for the resort because without it to provide jobs they would have starved—all but one drunken old cuss, who didn’t like progress and refused to sell, mostly because he enjoyed watching the Garrison agents go nuts trying to con him. And he never had given a damn if his kids were hungry.”

  “And this old cuss would be?”

  “Don’t get ahead of the story. Right now all you need to know is there was one.

  “It wasn’t until the fifties that the real bonanza kicked in. That was when Dalton Garrison took over and decided to make a contribution to mankind—while expanding the family’s assets, of course. He hired horticulturists from universities around the country to plant gardens here. Azaleas were the specialty; they put in every species there was, including several new hybrids they developed. Mr. Dalt was the one who built that greenhouse in the Gardens and stocked it with orchids and all those other exotic plants. If you haven’t seen it yet, you really should before you leave.”

  “I’m not much of an exotic-plant person.”

  “Pity. We have some of the best. He also put in that huge vegetable garden that’s been on TV, he had a lake built, and he put in the hiking and biking trails that go through the forest.

  “He named the whole thing Garrison Gardens, and in a gesture that was as noble as it was shocking he opened it to the public.”

  He smiled as he fed her her cue. “Shocking because?”

  “He let the peasants in. For the price of a quarter, a family could park in the public parking lots, picnic on the lawns, swim in the lake, and visit the nurseries where the botanists grew the Garrison Azalea and the Charles Valley Rose. Children got lectures on how flowers are cross-pollinated. New techniques for growing corn and tomatoes were demonstrated at the vegetable garden. Schools sent their kids to the Gardens on field trips. Educators applauded. The lodge became the big pissy hotel you’re staying at. Less expensive A-frame cottages were built for guests who couldn’t afford the hotel. A campground was set up for those who couldn’t afford the cottages. It was democratic as hell. And profitable?”

  She let out a little laugh. He laughed along with her.

  “Money was rolling in. And Charles Valley, no matter how it felt at first, wound up being grateful. Most country folks were watching their kids run to cities in the North as soon as they graduated from high school, but parents here could tell the young ’uns to stay home and go work for the Gardens. So even if Mr. Dalt rigged the occasional election and made the zoning board keep out new businesses, at least a man would get to know his grandbabies and they wouldn’t grow up talking like Yankees. And because of that, people were willing to forget they had never been anything but waiters and bellboys. Except the family of the old cuss.”

  “Good. I was hoping we’d get back to him.”

  “Actually, he died in a bar fight that was such a Willie Nelson cliché it’s embarrassing to talk about it. But he left his land—two acres, including a right of way to the road—to his son, who left it to his son, and so on down the line.”

  “The end of that line being . . . ?”

  “Me.”

  “And the land?”

  “You’re sitting on it. Right smack in the middle of the beautiful Garrison Nature Preserve, where it sticks in their craw and screws up the bucolic landscape. Over the years, my people have sold junk on this land and turned it into an unauthorized trailer park and a used-car lot. I’m a better neighbor than the others, I just have a habit of shining br
ight lights into the woods and banging pots and pans to alert the deer during hunting season. The Garrison Trust has tried to buy this place time and again, they even offered fair market value for it, but no matter how broke or desperate or drunk we might be, we have never ever considered selling. Praise Jesus and Amen.”

  She resisted an impulse to bow. Josh stood up. Somehow she wound up much closer to that bare chest than she intended to be. She told herself.

  “Are you still mad at me for not . . . ?” He trailed off.

  “Finishing what you started? I never said I was mad.”

  “Yeah, you did. Sort of.” He grinned at her, but there was something sad in it. “I always know when smart, angry girls are mad. They’re a specialty of mine.” She noticed she hadn’t moved away from that chest. He hadn’t moved either.

  “The thing is,” he said softly, “I like to have the woman’s undivided attention. You know?”

  She was now sober and it was late. But he did have that body. And it would be good to have her bed smelling of a man again. She nodded and reached up to him at exactly the same moment that he bent down to her. And the kissing really was good when she put her mind to it. And he knew exactly where to put his hands. And what to do with them when he got them there. And this time she didn’t have anything else on her mind. And as far as she could tell, neither did he.

  Somewhere close to morning, Laurel woke up. She opened her eyes just enough to see that the room was still inky dark. Josh had tossed one arm over her chest and was pulling her to him, squashing her breasts. His other arm was bent so his hand was under her shoulder, and his body was curled around her. It seemed the big New York writer liked to sleep spoon style.

  Her leg was getting stiff. As gently as she could, so as not to disturb him, she turned onto her back. Without waking he shifted with her. Sleep choreography was obviously a skill of his. Suddenly, for absolutely no reason she wanted to cry. She had to get out of the bed. But then, again without waking, he sighed and did something that could only be described as nuzzling her neck, so she closed her eyes and concentrated on not letting the tears well up. And eventually she went back to sleep.

  Chapter Five

  THE ELECTRIC MIXER WAS WHIRRING smoothly through the cake batter. Maggie added a teaspoon of vinegar, watched it blend into the red-brown mixture, and turned off the motor. It didn’t do to overmix. It had been years since she made a red velvet cake, but she’d awakened before dawn with a need to do something useful. She did that a lot now, but there had been a time when sleeping was one of her major pleasures. She could stretch her body out under cool clean sheets, and give herself over to oblivion for ten or twelve hours. Now she got scratchy as a cat after half that time, and often spent the rest of the night wandering through the house or reading books she’d already read, waiting for seven o’clock so she could phone Li’l Bit and begin her day. Peggy, on the other hand, was not to be disturbed before noon.

  Maggie checked her watch and glanced at the phone. There were still hours to go before she could call the sheriff’s department. She could try Li’l Bit, who was usually up early too; it was tempting, but she could wait. They had a long day ahead of them. Long and sad. Which she wasn’t going to think about. Finish the cake, she told herself.

  Fortunately she had some cream cheese in the fridge for the icing; butter frosting was out of the question for red velvet cake. She was orthodox about her baking. Perhaps because doing it the old way brought back the early days with Lottie.

  IN THE BEGINNING it had been about idolatry, plain and simple. Lottie could run faster, climb higher, and jump farther than anyone else. She was the author of the endless sagas they played out day after day, serial dramas based on Grimm’s Fairy Tales, Little Lord Fauntleroy, and a gloomy little tearjerker called Nobody’s Boy. These were the stories Maggie’s mother read to her every afternoon as a reward for memorizing the alphabet and learning to read. Mama had trained to be a teacher before she got married, and she wasn’t about to let her smart little Maggie idle away her days just because she was too young for formal schooling. And anything Maggie learned, she passed on to Lottie, who picked it up secondhand as fast as Mama could teach it.

  Soon Maggie and Lottie had devoured every book on the shelves in Maggie’s playroom. Maggie smuggled Mama’s magazines out of the house, and they spent hours under the magnolia trees, puzzling over household hints and stories about ladies who weren’t acceptable in something called polite society because they had Sinned.

  They were polar opposites, she and Lottie. She was a steady child, smart but not brilliant and not given to quick emotions. Lottie was all speed and fire. She learned fast, got bored easily, and reacted viscerally.

  When an early hurricane uprooted an old Douglas fir tree and knocked it across the driveway, the workmen who were clearing it up found a nest of orphaned baby squirrels in the trunk. Pink-skinned, hairless, with eyes still closed, they were too young to survive without a mother. Ralph was going to take them to the spring and drown them, but Lottie couldn’t bear it. She wept so hard, begging him to let her have them, swearing that she and Maggie could take care of them, that he finally gave in. Maggie looked on, knowing the enterprise was doomed. But she helped Lottie wrap the little creatures in towels to simulate the nest they had come from and heated milk to feed them from an eyedropper. For three terrible days they tried to force milk and sugar water down the throats of the baby squirrels. Maggie watched Lottie stroke the little bodies, fighting to keep them alive through sheer force of will. There was something almost cruel in Lottie’s determination, and it was a relief when one by one the poor little things died. As they buried the last one, Lottie whispered, “All I wanted to do was save them. Why couldn’t we?” Maggie started to say, Because they were too little, and we never should have tried. But Lottie’s eyes looked so tragic that she said, “We didn’t know enough. Next time we’ll know more, and we’ll do it right.”

  The next day Lottie said, as if they had just been talking about it, “That’d be the best thing in the world, wouldn’t it? Knowing how to make something keep on living.”

  And for the first time since they buried the baby squirrels, Lottie smiled the big joyful smile that lit up her face. Sometimes Maggie thought everything that happened afterward had stemmed from that moment. And moments like it.

  THE CAKE PANS WERE GREASED AND FLOURED. Maggie grasped the bowl of cake batter and began pouring it into the pans, dividing the batter evenly without having to measure it. These days, because of her arthritis, she used an aluminum bowl; the old ceramic ones she loved were too heavy for her to lift off the shelf. So she was stuck with this metal thing that reminded her of the sick pans in hospitals. She finished pouring, tapped the pans gently to get rid of the air, and put them in the oven.

  HER LIFE HAD BEEN SO SIMPLE when she was growing up. She was the only child of two doting middle-aged parents. Except for Lottie, the only other youngster around was Harrison Banning’s daughter, who was ten years younger. Lottie’s older brother and two sisters were already out of the house and working when Lottie was born. So Maggie and Lottie ran free on the farm, playing their games untroubled by outsiders. Sometimes it seemed to her that it had been unfair of God to make it all so easy back then. Those days had not prepared her for what lay ahead.

  In the early years, Maggie’s mama hadn’t worried about the friendship between her daughter and her cook’s child. She assumed it would end when Maggie started school. It often happened that way: A white child would befriend a Negro playmate, particularly when they lived in an isolated area without any other families nearby. It all sorted itself out when the white child went off to school with her own kind. So Mama waited patiently for Maggie to drop Lottie and start making some real friends. When she didn’t, Mama finally felt she had to say something.

  “Don’t you see how unkind you’re being, Doodlebug?” she asked gently. “Lottie doesn’t even talk like a colored girl.”

  It was true. She and Lottie did sound
alike, although she hadn’t realized until that moment that Lottie spoke the way she did. The idea pleased her.

  But not Mama. “All you’re doing is encouraging poor Lottie to get above herself. It’s not fair to her.”

  Maggie thought about giving Mama a list of all the things Lottie could do better than she did, but it would only make Mama lecture even more. So she smiled her sweetest, which could be very sweet indeed, and she and Lottie went on as they always had.

  Until Mama lost all patience. “Maggie, I told you to stop this,” she said. “I won’t have people talking about my daughter and saying she’s strange.”

  “It’s nobody’s business what I do.”

  “Of course it is. Your family has a reputation in this town. People watch us, don’t you forget that. And for a young lady your age to have no friends but one little colored girl doesn’t look good. If you don’t stop, I’ll have a talk with Charlie Mae, and you know what she’ll do to Lottie.”

  So Lottie and Maggie took their friendship underground. On a thirty-acre farm with numerous outbuildings it wasn’t hard to duck the adults. And every once in a while, to appease her mama, Maggie brought schoolmates home to play. She thought she and Lottie could go on forever with their life.

  But they were growing up. Their bodies were racing toward a maturity she wanted no part of. In the course of one summer, Maggie developed a porcelain prettiness that caused Mama’s friends to cluck and say she was going to be a regular little heartbreaker. And Lottie became beautiful. Years later Maggie would still remember with an ache Lottie’s transformation from a skinny girl into a tall slender creature with high cheekbones, brown satin skin, and huge dark eyes. Maggie stayed childishly petite, but Lottie blossomed into a classic hourglass. She carried herself proudly, even when Charlie Mae punished her for being vain.