Garden of Lies

by Eileen Goudge

  Halfway up, she had frozen, her knees turning to Jell-O.

  “I can’t!” she’d wailed.

  Brian’s voice had floated up to her. “Sure, you can, Rosie. I know you can. It’s not hard. I promise you won’t fall. But even if you do I’ll catch you.”

  And she had believed him. Brian would catch her. Of course he would, absolutely, positively. Hadn’t he always taken care of her? She remembered his walking her into the kindergarten that first day when Marie, disgusted by her crying, had left her outside in the schoolyard. Brian was already in the third grade, but he’d given her a licorice whip and walked her to the classroom. And he’d held her hand. That was the best part, even with his friends all looking, the big boys from Precious Blood, razzing him. So Rose, frozen there five floors above the sidewalk, knew without a doubt that Brian would keep his word, even though another part of her knew that if she did fall he could never catch her.

  Rose smiled now as she hiked her foot over the top rung, onto the roofs warm weather-heaved tar-paper surface. She paused a moment, letting her eyes adjust to the orange-gray dusk. There, wedged in between the chimney and a ventilator shaft, was the fort. Their secret hideout. She was a little surprised to see it was still there. Years ago, they’d built it from stuff scavenged out of a construction site behind Gross’s Bakery—scraps of plywood, leftover Sheetrock, a roll of fiberglass insulation, some old foam cushions, a [53] shower curtain decorated with pink seahorses. How awed Brian had been when she showed him the system she’d devised to haul all that stuff up with ropes and pulleys. The two of them, using Mr. McClanahan’s toolbox—Brian with his perfect vision of what it would look like, she the careful one who made sure every board was level before they drove a nail, then that all the cracks got caulked—had worked side by side to build it.

  The trouble, she realized now as she crawled in behind Brian, ducking her head to clear the board onto which Brian had burned the wavery words “Spy-Glass Hill” (after the lookout in Treasure Island), was they sure had outgrown it. The scrawny kid she’d played with back then was now six feet of bone and ropey muscle. Stretched out on the foam cushions, leaning against one wall with his feet tucked up against the other, Brian looked a little ridiculous. Like Gulliver in Lilliput.

  Still, Rose felt a strange peace creep over her. God, the hours they’d spent up here! They hadn’t done anything all that special, really, she thought. Just hanging out. Playing cards mostly. Gin Rummy, War, and Spit. Or smoking the Winstons he’d cadged from his father. But mostly just talking, imagining different ways their lives might turn out.

  Brian was going to be a writer, like Ernest Hemingway. When he was thirteen, Brian wrote a novel. It was about big-game hunting, full of scenes with the hero escaping being gored by a rhinoceros in one chapter and savaged by lions in the next. And the heroine kept fainting in the path of stampeding elephants. Parts of it made her laugh, it was so ridiculous, but she’d loved it, too.

  Rose’s dream wasn’t nearly as big or exciting. She wanted only one thing: to get out, get away, far away. She’d spun fantasies about running away, to California maybe, where Nonnie would never find her. She dreamed of sneaking aboard a ship, or a train, going as far as it would take her.

  There was only one problem. Running away would mean leaving Brian.

  “A penny for your thoughts,” Brian broke into her reverie.

  Rose sighed. “Better make it a dollar.”

  “That bad?”

  Pulling her knees to her chest, she leaned her head back against [54] the wall. Years of rain and snow had buckled and warped it. But they’d made the wall several inches thick, and secured it to the chimney with baling wire. It could withstand a hurricane, Rose thought.

  She looked over at Brian. His arms were behind his head, the back of his neck braced against his interlaced palms. In the twilight that filtered through the torn shower curtain, his face was all contours and shadows. She studied the long bony ridge of his nose. His eyes, that’s what really got her. They were like the eyes of saints in devotional paintings, a sort of silvery gray, shining with a light that seemed to come out of nowhere. Brian was no saint—she thought of all the cigarettes he’d “borrowed” from his father, and the time he’d roped Brother Paul’s bumper to a fire hydrant—but he was the only truly good person Rose had ever known, the only one who really cared about her.

  She looked away. She couldn’t bear the thought that those eyes could ever be turned on her in disgust.

  “Do you ever think about your parents ... you know ... doing it with people besides each other?” Rose asked.

  Brian laughed. “With seven kids? Even if they wanted to, when would they have the time?”

  “I was wondering about ... well, other people. Doing it even though they’re not married to each other.” Rose picked at a chunk of dirty gray foam coming loose from a cushion. “Marie and Pete are getting married.”

  “Hey, that’s great!”

  “She’s pregnant.”

  “Oh.” He was silent for a moment. “Is that why you were crying?”

  “No. I’m happy for her. Pete’s okay. It’s what she wants. I just ...” In a burst of feeling, she told him what Nonnie had said.

  Brian looked at her for a long time. Then he said, in that slow, thoughtful way of his, “Even if it was true, why would she tell you?”

  “To get back at me.”

  “For what? What did you ever do to her?”

  “She thinks I killed my parents. She doesn’t care about my mother. It’s my father she was really crazy about.”

  “Jesus, you were just a baby.”

  [55] “He was away, a radioman on a destroyer. After my mother ... after I was born, he came back ... but only for a few days. I always thought the reason he didn’t hang around was because he was sad about my mother, and seeing us—Marie and Clare and me—reminded him too much of her. Then after he was killed ... I made him into this big hero in my mind. My mother, too. I pictured her as some kind of saint, like Joan of Arc. And now Nonnie is saying—” Hot tears rose in her throat, choking off the words.

  “Forget what she said,” Brian broke in angrily. “It’s not true. You know it’s not. She’s always been out to get you one way or another.”

  “But what if she’s right? Look at me, Bri. I’m not like anyone else in my family. It’s like ... like I fell out of the sky or something. No one is dark like me. You know what some of the girls at Sacred Heart call me? Aunt Jemima. They say one of my ancestors must have been colored.”

  Brian stiffened, his face glowing white in the twilit shadows. “You never told me that,” he said.

  “I knew you’d be mad. Anyway, I took care of them.” A wisp of satisfaction threaded up out of her misery. “I wrote their names on the Interested list for the all-day bus trip to St. Mary’s Convent. When Sister read them off, she was so happy—and none of them had the guts to back out.”

  Rose started to laugh, but her laughter caught in her throat. Suddenly she was weeping, hard, gasping sobs that doubled her over in pain.

  Brian crouched beside her, encircling her with his arms. “Screw them all. It doesn’t matter what they think. All that matters is you.”

  She lifted her face, wet and swollen with tears. “Do you think it’s true, Bri? Do you think I’m a ... a bastard like Marie’s baby?”

  “No, but I wouldn’t care if you were.” He smoothed her hair as she rested her face against his sweatshirt. It smelled of baby powder and shampoo and his own musky male scent. “Anyway, what’s wrong with being different? You’re a thousand times smarter than any girl I know.”

  “But I’m not pretty.” She realized how coy that sounded, and she quickly added, “And I’m not fishing for compliments. It’s true.”

  “Says who?”

  [56] Rose felt prickly heat crawl up her neck, and was grateful he could hardly see her in the dark. “Well, I’m just not.” She spoke more brusquely than she’d intended. “Anyway, I don’t care.”
/>   Brian drew back, and grabbed her by the shoulders. “Rose, you are pretty.”

  “Oh yeah?” she scoffed. “Well, I don’t see anyone else rushing to get a closer look at me.”

  “Maybe they would, if you didn’t make it so hard. You’re so sure people won’t like you you’ve got your chin up before they say one word to you. Hell, Rose, you gotta give people a chance.”

  “You mean I should flirt more, like Georgette?”

  “Don’t start in on her again, Rose,” Brian warned.

  “What did I say?”

  “You don’t like her.”

  Rose felt as if she were riding the Cyclone at Coney Island. She wanted to stop, but she couldn’t. There was no way to get off. Deep down, she’d been mad at Brian ever since he first started going out with Georgette. It was dumb, but she’d somehow felt she was losing him as her best friend.

  “I never said I don’t like her,” Rose countered. “Anyway, it’s not what I think that counts. The point is that you like her. Maybe you even love her. She’s the type boys go after. I suppose you do it with Georgette.”

  “It’s none of your damn business!” Brian exploded. He pulled away from her with an angry wrench, throwing himself down onto the cushions.

  In the quiet that followed, Rose became aware that her heart was beating very fast.

  “I’m sorry, Bri,” Rose said softly, reaching out to touch his arm.

  She wasn’t sorry really for not liking Georgette, though. Who could like someone named Georgette, who looked like a Barbie doll, wore cashmere sweaters, and had more blond hair than a collie?

  “You really have it in for her, don’t you?”

  “I only said she reminded me of Lassie.”

  “Lassie is a dog.”

  “So? I happen to like dogs.”

  Brian laughed in spite of himself. “Face it, Rose. It wouldn’t [57] matter if she was Grace Kelly. You just don’t like her because I’m dating her. You and Ma. You’re two of a kind.”

  “Your mother!” Rose, furious, jumped to her feet. Smacking her head on the low roof, she was abruptly and painfully reminded that she’d grown a fair bit since the fourth grade. She sank down, rubbing her scalp. It didn’t hurt as much as her ego.

  His mother. Jesus. That stung. Even if he was only her best friend and not her boyfriend, it hurt to have him think of her along with his big, soft, and somehow (despite seven kids) sexless mother.

  “For your information, Mr. Smart-pants, I’ve had plenty of experience myself,” she told him. “And not just kissing.”

  “Sure you have,” Brian said matter-of-factly. She could see he was screwing his lips down to keep from smiling.

  She sighed, defeated. It was no use lying. Brian could always see right through her. She remembered bragging one time that her father had been an admiral in the navy, and had torpedoed a whole fleet of slant-eyes when he was in the War.

  They’d been walking to school, and Brian had stooped to pick up a blackened penny off the sidewalk. He’d studied it carefully. “Yeah,” he said. “My pop knew him. Said he was a great guy. He didn’t even have to be an admiral to be a great guy, I’ll bet.” He tucked the penny in his back pocket, and when he turned to her his face was solemn, the face of someone much older than twelve. “Rose, where’d you hear that word? Slant-eyes.”

  She had stopped skipping beside him, arrested by the cool light in his gray eyes. “From Nonnie. She says the people who killed my dad were a sneaky bunch of slant-eyed yellow bastards.”

  “Well, don’t say it again, okay? It’s a bad word. Like the ones you see on subway station walls. You like Bobby Lee, doncha?”

  “Sure, I do. He’s nice.” Bobby Lee’s father owned the Mandarin Garden, on Ocean Avenue, and the Lees lived in their building on the third floor.

  “Well, if you say that word you’re calling him one, too. There’s names for people like us, too. Wop. Guinea. Dago. Mick.”

  Rose had felt dirty and ashamed. “I didn’t mean it like that.”

  Brian had ruffled her hair. “Aw, Rose, doncha think I know that?”

  Now Rose suddenly realized exactly why she detested Brian’s [58] girlfriend. Not because of anything about her really. But because Georgette had crossed some sort of line with Brian. No, not a line, a wall—a wall that separated kids from grown-ups, the Berlin Wall of sex.

  Well, she was sick and tired of being on the other side of that wall, only imagining what other people were doing.

  People like Brian (probably) and Marie (definitely).

  “Kiss me, Bri,” she said, saying it the way she would have said, How about a game of Hearts?

  “What?” He sounded as shocked as if she’d suggested he spray-paint a statue of the Blessed Virgin.

  “Just a practice kiss,” she explained. “So I won’t make a complete idiot of myself when it’s the real thing. You can tell me what I’m doing wrong. Isn’t that what best friends are for?”

  “Not exactly.” He didn’t sound shocked anymore, just embarrassed. “But, well ... okay. I suppose it wouldn’t hurt.”

  “Do I sit up or lie down?” she asked, feeling suddenly nervous. Her mouth was dry as sandpaper. Would Brian notice? Oh well, she decided, what did it matter, if this was just a practice kiss?

  Brian seemed alarmed. “Stay right where you are,” he ordered. “And if a guy ever tells you to lie down, don’t, you hear?”

  She closed her eyes and waited. Nothing happened. She opened them to find Brian staring at her, frowning.

  “Not like that. You’re all puckered up. Relax your lips.”

  “Do I say ‘cheese’?”

  “Not unless you want your picture taken.”

  “That’d be nice. A snapshot for my memory album. My first kiss.”

  “Practice kiss,” he corrected.

  Brian leaned close. She could feel his breath against her face, warm and smelling vaguely of licorice. Then Brian’s lips were moving gently against hers. Rose felt as if she were in an elevator and it had just shot down three floors.

  Something soft and velvety nuzzled her teeth. The tip of Brian’s tongue. She opened her lips wider, feeling a gush of warmth spill through her guts as he probed the inside of her mouth with his tongue.

  When he pulled back they were both breathing hard. “Brian,” she whispered, as dizzy as that time they’d sneaked a bottle of Gallo [59] Red Mountain up here and drunk the whole thing. “Oh, Brian ...”

  “God, oh Rose, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—” He cupped her face in his hands. She noticed they were trembling. “I didn’t mean for it to be like that.”

  “Kiss me again,” she urged. “Kiss me for real this time.”

  This time the kiss didn’t end. He drew her down on the mattress. She felt strangely heavy. And wet. Down there. As if she were getting her period. Oh, Mother of Mercy, is this how it started with Marie and Pete?

  Brian moaned, almost as if in pain. “Jesus, Rose.”

  His hand moved up to cup her breast. She could feel it, hot and sweaty beneath the starched cotton of her blouse. She knew it was a sin. A sin, the Sisters had warned, even to touch yourself like that. But somehow it didn’t feel wrong, not with Brian. The hand on her breast was the same one that had held hers that first day of school.

  Brian was kissing her everywhere, his lips on her throat, her hair. His breath bursting against her in hot, astonished gasps. He pushed his hand under her blouse, and struggled clumsily to unhook her bra.

  It struck Rose then: He’s never done it before. He doesn’t know how.

  Swept with new tenderness for him, she reached up and un-snapped it for him.

  Brian groaned, moving his hips against her.

  He stroked her bare breast, and Rose thought she would surely melt with the heat of his hand there. But she was scared, too. It felt too good. Anything that felt this good had to be a sin. She wriggled to ease her skirt down, and Brian suddenly stiffened, letting out a deep, strangled moan.

  Rose felt
something damp against her leg. At first she thought, stricken, that he’d somehow wet himself. Then she realized, His stuff. The stuff that makes babies.

  She felt shame, knowing they had done something terrible, irreversible. She was just like Marie.

  But then the shame faded, and there was only Brian. Holding her tight. Her best friend, her soul.

  He was still for a long time, his face buried against her neck. She could feel his breath in her hair, a pulse beating wildly in his neck. Rose wanted to stay this way forever.

  Finally, he stirred, lifting his head. His long face gleamed in [60] the darkness. Rose saw the look of misery in his eyes, and pressed a finger lightly to his lips.

  “Don’t,” she said. “Don’t say you’re sorry.”

  Rose was astonished by what she was feeling, though what exactly that was she couldn’t have said right then. It blasted through her with the force of a jet, burning away Nonnie’s hateful words. She felt new, shining, as if she’d been reborn.

  When Sister Perpetua described getting the Call, this is how you’re supposed to feel, she thought. Except it wasn’t God making her feel this way. It was Brian.

  Suddenly, she understood, as if a part of her had aged a dozen years and she were looking back at herself, at the child she’d been just an hour ago, at all the things she’d felt but been unable to put a name to.

  “I love you,” she said.

  “Rose.” He tugged her to him and held her tightly, his words muffled by her hair. “Something ... happened. I’m not sure exactly what. But I ... I think I meant it. I think I must have wanted it to happen. God help me, Rose, I think I did.”

  It was those last words of his, “God help me,” that stuck in her mind like a thorn. A terrible thought occurred to her: would God punish her for loving Brian this way? They had committed adultery, hadn’t they? Sister Perpetua said adultery was any unclean thought or deed. Rose didn’t feel unclean, but she knew what Sister meant by it. Sex. And that was a sin unless you were married and did it to make a baby. Any kind of sex.