The First Gardener
Page 28
Tears came to Mackenzie’s eyes before she could stop them. They clustered on her eyelashes and blurred her vision. The pool turned into a backyard of blue. “No, honey, we don’t really swim in that pool.”
Suzy looked at her and crinkled her nose. “You mean you got a pool out there like that and you ain’t swim in—” she looked at her sisters—“I mean, you don’t swim in it? That’s crazy.”
Mackenzie looked out the window. She blinked at the tears, and the beauty of what rested below suddenly seemed to pop out at her. The colors were greener, brighter, the water in the pool bluer. The clouds gleamed an impossible gold in the setting sun. “Yeah, kind of crazy, isn’t it, Suzy?” She continued to stare out for a moment until she felt Suzy fidget beside her. She looked down.
The child’s hand was between her legs. “I gotta go pee.”
“Oh yeah, sure. Let’s go.” Mackenzie led them into the bathroom and let Suzy take care of her business while she filled the bath to the brim with warm water full of bubbles. Just like Maddie always liked it.
While the three girls climbed in, Mackenzie went to the linen closet and opened it. A bottle of baby shampoo was still inside. She pulled it out and steadied herself as she walked toward the tub again. Reminders were everywhere.
She soaked the girls’ heads and began to scrub them with shampoo. As she scrubbed, it seemed that the adult weight that had been on the older two’s shoulders washed away with all the dirt that had been on their little bodies.
She got out some of Maddie’s bath toys from the cabinet too and sat on the floor as the girls talked and played and laughed and blew bubbles. At one point she turned on the whirlpool jets. Each of them was startled for a moment, until the whirling water began to make more bubbles fly to the surface. Then their amazement turned to delight.
“Miz Mackenzie, you got any babies?” Suzy asked through the bubble mustache she had made for herself.
Mackenzie’s stomach clenched, but she knew the question came from an innocent place. “No, sweetie, I don’t.”
“Don’t want any?”
She froze. She couldn’t talk about this. She had holed it up inside her, in the place where dead things dwelled. But blue eyes were looking at her. “Well, I had one,” she finally said. “A little girl, actually.”
The older two stopped playing. Suzy grabbed a handful of bubbles and blew them. The bubbles flew right to Mackenzie’s feet. “Where did you put her?”
“Well, God took her, I guess.” She hadn’t mentioned God’s name in many weeks.
“Suzy, don’t ask no more questions.” Lily’s maturity was quickly returning.
But Toby obviously thought the reprimand was for Suzy alone. She put her hands on the side of the tub. “Did she die?”
Suzy stopped all movement when Toby spoke. She came to the edge of the tub and put her hands over the side as well.
How did you ignore children? How did you explain to them that some questions in life were too personal, some pain too private? Granted, Mackenzie had invited them into her bathroom, but she hadn’t invited them into the private places of her heart.
She answered anyway. “Yes.”
Suzy’s eyes were big and wide. Mackenzie felt her heart snap. She let the words come out as they willed. “My little girl, Maddie, was about your age,” she said, nodding at Suzy. “And she was beautiful, just like you.” She rubbed the girl’s arm. And the next words that left her mouth were ones she had never before spoken, at least this way. “She was killed in a car accident.”
All three girls stared at her, their faces solemn, their blue eyes large and now old. “You miss her?” Suzy finally asked.
Mackenzie bit the inside of her lip to stop the tears. “Every day.”
Lily seemed to study her for a moment, then lowered her head and spoke softly. “I miss our dad.”
The other two heads snapped toward her, and pain registered immediately on their faces.
“Oh, honey, did your father die?” Mackenzie asked.
“No, ma’am. He’s in jail.”
“Shot a man and killed him.” Suzy said it so matter-of-factly, it was clear she really didn’t understand what it all meant.
“He had just gotten released from jail too,” Lily added. “Said he was going to help Mama take care of us the right way. But he couldn’t find a job. Looked and looked for a real long time. Then one night he got in a fight with Mama, beat her up real bad, and then went and robbed a gas station. He killed the man that was working there. So they put him back in jail.”
Instantly Mackenzie remembered. The prisoner release. It had been all over the papers for quite a while, and there was even a lawsuit, but she didn’t know what, if anything, had happened with it. And the children affected by this nightmare were soaking in her tub.
Mackenzie saw tears well up in Lily’s eyes. She watched her desperately try to fight them, but she couldn’t. Mackenzie reached through the bubbles and wrapped her arms around Lily. Toby hugged her sister too, and Suzy waded through the tub to get near them.
Lily spoke through her tears. “Daddy did all that and never got any money. And once Mama got out of the hospital, she lost her job too. Then we couldn’t pay our rent anymore or anything, so she had to bring us to the shelter so we could get food and someplace to sleep.”
“It’ll be all right.” Suzy kissed her sister’s wet curls. “Mama’s gonna get a job, and we’re gonna get us a house and have all the macaroni and cheese we can stand.”
Mackenzie looked at Suzy and gave her a soft wink. “You’re exactly right. She sure will. But you three are going to become prunes if we don’t get you out of here.”
Suzy protested. “Aw, man.”
“Come on,” Lily coaxed.
All three climbed out, and Mackenzie wrapped them in towels. Then she led them toward the laundry room, where the first load of fresh, dry clothes was coming out of the dryer. Sandra held them out to the girls as if they carried the plague, but they didn’t seem to notice. Once they were dressed, they went downstairs with Eugenia to enjoy what they were told was a Mexican fiesta, with a special request accompaniment of macaroni and cheese.
Mackenzie returned to her room and stood in her closet, surprised to find she actually wanted to put on real clothes. She stepped into dark-wash straight-leg jeans and pulled on a white V-necked T-shirt. Her red flats with the brushed-gold buckles sat at the ready, and she slipped her feet inside.
She went to the mirror and studied her face. Her eyes seemed virtually hollowed out from the weight she had lost. She must have looked as scary to those girls as Dimples’s teeth.
She took a few minutes to put on some makeup and brush her teeth and for a moment act as if she were alive. For the first time in so long, she actually felt she might be.
She walked from her bathroom and saw the bright-red amaryllis standing tall in its container on the table. She remembered Gray bringing in something from Jeremiah, asking her if she knew what it meant. She hadn’t known. And until this moment she hadn’t really cared. She wondered about the meaning of that flower all the way downstairs.
Her mother’s face registered a brief shock at her arrival in the kitchen. But as usual, Eugenia acted as if everything was normal. “You want to help that little one with her plate before it ends up on the floor?”
“Sure. I’d be glad to.”
And the rest of the evening she helped her mother, her mother’s crazy friends, and a far-less-frantic Jessica—who had stayed late without even being asked—to take care of those three girls.
While Lily, Toby, and Suzy ate ice cream at a long table by the bay window in the kitchen, Mackenzie sat down by their mother. “Your children are beautiful.”
She nodded modestly. “Thank you. I believe they are as well.”
“I’m sorry.” Mackenzie shook her head. “I can’t recall your name.”
“It’s Grace.”
“Yes, right. Grace. Well, I’m sorry for what you’ve been through.”
“Yep, not around or under. Right, Mommy?” Suzy’s face was still stuck in her bowl.
Her mother laughed as she ran her hand down the top of Suzy’s clean head. “That’s right, baby. Just through.”
Mackenzie’s hand dropped to the table as the impact of the words settled on her. They echoed in her mind as she sat there listening to childish pleas for more ice cream. Finally Grace announced that dessert was over and it was time for bed.
When Eugenia rose to clear the table and walked by, Mackenzie grabbed her mother’s arm. “What’s the amaryllis mean, Mama?”
Her mother looked at her, her face revealing nothing. “It means ‘pride,’ Mackenzie.”
Mackenzie felt the force of the word. “Pride?”
“Yes, darling. And seems like we’ve all been dealing with our own form of it.”
“How am I prideful, Mama?”
Eugenia shook her head gently, the way a mother would at her baby girl when she doesn’t want to hurt her. “Self-pity can be pride. I’m not saying that’s where you are now, but in any kind of loss, it can come hunting for us.”
These words struck harder, the weight of them pressing Mackenzie deeper into the cushioned seat.
“It does have another meaning, though, that I think you should consider.”
“Yeah?”
Eugenia shifted the sticky ice cream bowl to her other hand. “It means ‘determination.’ Something I always instilled in you.” She picked up another bowl and walked toward the sink.
Mackenzie rose slowly. Suzy jumped from her chair. “Can we sleep with you, Miz Mackenzie?”
Mackenzie hesitated a second, then smiled. “I’ve got something even better than that for you.” And before she had thought it through, she was standing at Maddie’s door with Lily, Toby, and Suzy right behind her.
Her hand shook as she stood there. She felt one of the girls jostle another and whisper something. Then she opened the door slowly, revealing the room that had been virtually sealed as a tomb. Her baby girl’s smell no longer lingered, but every ounce of her still seemed alive in that world of pink.
Mackenzie closed the door quickly. Her pulse raced.
“You okay, Miz Mackenzie?” Lily’s hand was on her shoulder.
She looked down at the expectant face and exhaled slowly. She wanted to retreat. Just run to her room, climb in bed, and pull the covers over her head. But she couldn’t. Not now. If she did, she was pretty certain Suzy would come looking for her with twenty questions.
For some reason, that thought calmed her. She turned the knob and opened the door again. “Let’s get you girls put to bed.”
She tucked the two older girls into the twin beds and fixed Suzy a pallet on the floor—or a “palace,” as she called it. Then she found a book and read them a story. Before she was through, each of them had fallen asleep.
Mackenzie pulled the covers up tight under Suzy’s chin and marinated in the magic of a five-year-old. She didn’t want to let it go. She wanted to grab it and bottle it up to pull out and enjoy whenever she wanted.
The light in Maddie’s closet shone through the door she had left cracked at Suzy’s suggestion. She walked to it and held the knob in her hand. These were waters she hadn’t even dreamed of traveling. She let go of the knob and just stood there.
Not around or under. Just through.
She pulled it open, wide. Everything in there was just like it was the day Maddie died. She hadn’t touched it, not one piece of it, though she suspected that Eugenia or the housekeepers had dusted and vacuumed.
She entered the closet and closed the door behind her. She ran her hands along the edges of Maddie’s tulle “princess skirt” on its hanger. Maddie’s shoes were all still neatly placed side by side, and the papers from her first couple days of school still sat on her bottom shelf.
Mackenzie took a construction paper booklet from the shelf. The first page read, My World, by Maddie London. Each following page held a drawing of how Maddie saw her world. There were stick figures of Mackenzie and Gray. A pretty good depiction of a fluffy dog, a wild-haired child she had to assume was Oliver, and a picture of Rosa’s pancakes. And a tall, dark figure holding a flower.
It was Maddie’s world, all right. It had been Mackenzie’s world too. But grief had swallowed it whole. She had allowed that to happen.
She’d had a picture of her world too, a picture in her mind. She and Gray and at least two kids living out their lives together, doing what they were created to do, loving people, loving God. And then, when they were old, sitting on the front porch with their grandchildren.
It was such a beautiful picture. A perfect picture. And her life hadn’t turned out anything like it. For that, she had rebuked heaven. Ever since Maddie died, in one way or another, that’s what she’d been doing.
In that moment, the truth of how she’d lived the past six months washed over her and she knew: only she could have allowed it. Yes, the grief was real and thick. But she had chosen to let it all consume her. And only she could dig her way out.
She pulled more papers from the shelf and carefully studied them one by one, letting the pain and loss of what lay before her be felt. Telling herself, minute by minute, Go through. Go through.
Tears ran in steady streams down her face the whole time. Then she reached the last page, a half-drawn picture. The irony wasn’t lost on her. Maddie’s picture had never been finished. Nor had hers.
Mackenzie crumpled to her knees, pulling one of Maddie’s shirts from a hanger as she did and stuffing it against her face to stifle her cries, cries that came from deep inside her. It felt like they’d been pushed so far down they had clogged up her soul. But as they were dislodged, so was something else. Something even deeper. Something . . . healing.
Bursts of grief rushed through her for at least thirty minutes. When the tears finally subsided, she felt spent but somehow alive. The pain hadn’t killed her. In fact, feeling it, experiencing it, going through it had actually allowed her to know she was alive.
She lowered her body to the floor and curled up on her side, the fine fiber of the carpet pressed against her cheek. “Forgive me,” she whispered.
She spoke it for so many different reasons. But she spoke it first to herself. She had to in order to live. If she didn’t let go of what she was holding against her own heart, she could never move forward. Then she spoke it to Maddie, as she had done many times before. But she determined this would be the last time. It had to end somewhere, and she was choosing for it to end here. I’m so sorry, baby. Please forgive me.
Finally she spoke it to heaven. She was coming to realize that heaven hadn’t been holding her prisoner. Yes, God had allowed her to be crushed beneath a weight of grief she didn’t feel anyone should have to carry, but it was she who had imprisoned her own soul. With self-pity? Yes, she knew it. It was self-pity that had held her in a prison of grief.
Not that the pain wasn’t real. But somehow it had welded itself to resentment over the fact that real life didn’t match her picture of it. She had assumed she deserved to have the life she wanted, and when that didn’t happen, she had wanted to give up. For that, she told heaven she was sorry.
She lifted her head slightly and pulled the half-finished picture toward her. As she studied it, a soft seed of hope stirred, a thought that maybe, just maybe, an incomplete picture meant that there was something left for heaven to work with.
She couldn’t imagine what her new picture might be. In fact, just believing that there might be one would be the biggest step of faith she had ever taken. And in that deep place in her soul, where the black pit that had all but swallowed her whole still existed as a reminder of what she could choose, she made a decision.
She didn’t just take a step, though. Mackenzie London leaped.
Chapter 52
Eugenia kept her ear by the door of Mad
die’s bedroom while Mackenzie tucked in the three sisters. Dimples had told her earlier that Mackenzie had taken the girls to her bathroom. At least Dimples thought it was Mackenzie. “If it wasn’t,” she’d said, “there was another real attractive brunette rummaging around here, and you might want to call the police.”
Berlyn assured Eugenia it was Mackenzie and told Dimples it was time for a new hearing aid to go with her one good eye. So the three of them had gone to check on Sandra in the laundry room. They found her stripped to her bra and granny panties and waiting on her own clothes to dry because she was certain they had all been contaminated. She swore she’d seen lice.
Eugenia confirmed her suspicion. She was pretty sure there were no lice, but at this point Sandra had driven her crazy, so saying there were lice brought satisfaction and some entertainment. The three friends watched Sandra strip off her remaining clothes quicker than they would have come off on her wedding night if God actually had a man on earth who could tolerate her. Eugenia had to fetch some of Mackenzie’s sweats just so they wouldn’t have to look at her.
Everybody had finally gotten settled for the night. Jessica had even come up with a big basket of bath oils and lotions and some nice pajamas to help Grace feel pampered and comfortable in the guest room. Eugenia had to admit that Jessica had more to her than anyone suspected. Not just starchy organization, but practical caring—and there was a lot to be said for practical caring.
When Mackenzie went into Maddie’s room, Eugenia had felt a thud of panic collide with her airway. She wasn’t sure how the events of the day would actually reveal themselves in Mackenzie’s emotions. And she certainly hadn’t planned on telling her about the flower. But Mackenzie had asked. Eugenia might have her faults, but she’d never believed in protecting people from the truth.
Life was what it was, and this was Mackenzie’s life. So she had told her. Besides, she was still trying out this whole surrender thing too.
She stood there in the hallway for a long time, praying for Mackenzie. And when she finally heard stifled cries coming from inside, she’d felt some of her panic subside. Other than the day at the mall, Mackenzie had shown virtually no emotion since the miscarriage. As far as Eugenia was concerned, real crying was almost always a good thing. And though it took everything she had not to rush in there and wrap her arms around her baby girl and let her know everything would be okay, she knew Mackenzie needed this grief more than she needed her mama. She needed to feel the pain of everything she had lost.