The Garden of Happy Endings

by Barbara O'Neal

  And this was a powerful, beautiful Sunday, one of the best of the year. Advent. Light arriving in the darkness of the world.

  But she felt no light, anywhere in her, anywhere in the world. It was always a challenge to adjust to the rainy season, but this year it was even more difficult. They had not seen the sun since the harvest festival, almost two solid months before. The deep gloom, the eternal, endless sound of rain falling and falling and falling, and the constant cold damp were taking their toll.

  Focus, she told herself, drinking tea and poking at a bowl of oatmeal. She went over her notes for the sermon. The light coming into the world. The beginning of the most sacred season for Christians. Advent. The birth of Christ. In metaphysical terms, a new start for all.

  An R.E.M. song wound through her head, mocking. Losing my religion.

  Lost. It was lost.

  And yet, she had an obligation to her congregation, who were still reeling. A web of soft despair had fallen over them, like a people enchanted in an old fairy tale, and they were looking to Elsa to help them shake it off.

  This morning, she would give them the first Advent candle. She would sing the first Christmas carols of the season and would act as if—as if she believed, as if she still loved this season with abiding passion, as if there was healing if they would only reach for it.

  At her feet, Charlie whined softly and licked her shin. “It’s all right, baby,” she said. But it was hard to fool a dog. “Let’s go to church, shall we?”

  He leapt to his feet and they drove over in the rain.

  The church was tucked into a neighborhood full of monkey trees and firs and hemlocks, the ground thick with ferns and moss and greenery of a thousand varieties. Elsa had grown up in the high, bright deserts of southern Colorado, and she never ceased to marvel at the number of things that grew here.

  She had learned to carry an umbrella, which she opened now before she left the car, keeping it angled so that her hair and clothing stayed dry. Charlie leapt out of the car behind her, padding into her office, where he would stay until after the service.

  It was dark enough that she had to turn on the lamps. She closed the door behind her so that random people would not disturb her before she grappled with this morning’s lesson. She could hear the small choir practicing in the sanctuary, and women talking and laughing in the kitchen. It was a church filled with artists and massage therapists, professors and students, a vibrant, energetic—and often eccentric—crowd. They arrived at Unity through metaphysics and Wicca, fallen away Catholicism or old-school theologies that no longer served modern, questing populations. There were meetings for mothers and children, for Abraham adherents, for Reiki sessions, and studying Lessons in Truth. The bulletin board held flyers for masseuses and jewelry makers, for psychic readings of many varieties and lessons in shamanism.

  She loved them, every single one of them. How—

  A strong knock shattered her thoughts, and Elsa scowled. They knew better than to disturb her on a Sunday morning when her office door was closed. Who in the world …?

  She opened the door, prepared to deliver a firm correction. Instead, she gaped at her sister, Tamsin. Tall and sleek, as long-legged as a Barbie doll, she was as pretty as Elsa was plain. Their mother used to say that Elsa was as ordinary as peas, while Tamsin was a dinner plate dahlia.

  “Hi,” she said. “Surprise.”

  Elsa blurted out, “What are you doing here?”

  “I came to see how you are.” She looked Elsa up and down. “Turns out I was right to be worried. When was the last time you ate?”

  Elsa held up her hands. “Look, I can’t do this right now. You’re going to have to come back after church.” She gestured behind her to the lamplit office, her desk, scattered with paper. “I-I have work to do. I have a sermon in an hour.”

  “That’s fine.” Tamsin took a step back. “I’ll go find the kitchen and get a cup of coffee, leave you to it.”

  “Okay. I’ll see you around one.”

  “Can’t I stay and listen to the sermon? I’ve never heard you preach.”

  “Teach. We call it a lesson.”

  Tamsin shrugged. Her hair was long, down to the middle of her back, and although she was eight years older than Elsa, she looked younger. “Teach, then. You know I’m not that big on sermons anyway.” She blew Elsa a little kiss. “Get back to it. I’ll see you in a while.”

  Elsa closed the door, airless. If her sister had shown up, Elsa wasn’t covering her crisis as well as she’d thought. She turned back to the desk, looking at the papers stacked up there, the things she’d left undone. What was she doing with her time, anyway? It was like she lost hours each day to nothing at all.

  None of that mattered right now. She had a lesson to deliver, and come hell or high water—both of which seemed likely this morning—she would give it. She kicked off a shoe and rubbed her foot along Charlie’s side. He thumped his tail against the floor.

  Elsa focused on her task.

  She could do this.

  * * *

  Tamsin sat through the sermon with a brick in her belly. Elsa had lost weight she could not afford to lose, and she had dark circles under her eyes. The worst was how her sister’s hands shook when she tried to light the Advent candle. It took her six tries. Six. The congregation sat in quiet agony as their minister dropped match after match, grimly determined to finish the task even if she burned the building down.

  But as Elsa began to speak, Tamsin forgot all of that. How was it possible that she’d never heard her little sister give a sermon until now? She’d been a minister for more than ten years.

  Elsa was transformed as she stepped forward, as if she had stepped into a new body. Her voice was vibrant and strong, her face radiant with love. She made her congregants laugh, and told them stories, and circled around to deliver a spiritual and emotional punch that had many of them reaching for tissues, including Tamsin. “Wow,” she breathed.

  “Isn’t she amazing?” the woman sitting next to her said. “I’d just about given up on organized religion, when I came here and heard her talk.”

  Tamsin nodded. After the service, she wandered down the hall to the fellowship room, where coffee and snacks were spread out on the counter. People greeted her, shook her hand, welcomed her, as she wandered around the room, mainly eavesdropping. The mood was subdued. “I like to think we’ll all feel better once winter is over,” one older woman said to her friend.

  Elsa came into the room. “Everybody,” she called, lifting her hands in the air. “I want to introduce someone to you. This is my sister, Tamsin.” She pointed to the corner where Tamsin stood. “Raise your hand, sis. Isn’t she beautiful?”

  Tamsin raised her hand, feeling a flush of pride in her relationship to this tiny woman with her beautiful hair and beaming smile. “Thanks.”

  “We are so lucky to have her,” said a man standing near Tamsin. “It’s been a terrible time here, but she’s getting us through it.”

  Tamsin squeezed his arm. “I heard. I’m so sorry.”

  “Spirit will see us through,” he said. “Now, you take her out and get her something hearty to eat, why don’t you? She’s skin and bones lately.”

  Tamsin had been imagining that she would take Elsa back home to Pueblo with her, at least for a few weeks, but she saw now that wouldn’t happen. No way Elsa would leave them, not when they were in such dire straits.

  So, for today, Tamsin would do just what the man had suggested—feed her sister, make sure she was eating. She would listen if Elsa would talk. She would keep a close eye on her.

  Maybe Elsa would come home at Christmas, just for a week or two. Or right after Christmas, since the church would want its minister on the holiest days of the year. She would talk her into it.

  Chapter Four

  On the darkest day of the year, four days before Christmas, Elsa awakened long before dawn and made a pot of tea. As the tea bags steeped, she checked her phone messages and saw that Joaquin had cal
led twice. She didn’t listen to the messages. It would be the same thing. Call me. Call me. Call me.

  But she couldn’t talk to him right now. He with his mighty faith. How could she tell him what she was thinking? It was humiliating, in a way, to suddenly be one of the lost, instead of one of the leaders. She kept telling herself to pull it together, to find a way to get over all of this, to stop being a big baby, but it wasn’t working.

  Even thinking about it, she had to go outside to smoke. Which was insane, too. She knew it. She just couldn’t stop.

  She had grieved before—grieved her father most sincerely, and a friend who had died in a car accident when she was in college, as well as many others since becoming a minister. She understood, both emotionally and intellectually, the process of grief.

  But no amount of understanding was doing any good this time. Yesterday, the board had called her in to a meeting and gently, firmly told her that she had to take a sabbatical. They were contacting an associate pastor at a Unity church in Portland, who would be more than happy to take the position until Elsa “felt better.” A semi-retired minister who had sometimes subbed for her in the past, Reverend Harris. He was a fatherly man, and kindly, a good choice to lead the bruised congregation during her absence.

  She had resisted, insisting she was fine, that she’d be okay in another week or two, but the board had been immovable. They’d dismissed her, for six months. At the end of May, they would reassess.

  Objectively, she could see that she was in crisis. She hadn’t slept more than two hours at a stretch in the ten weeks since Kiki’s murder. She had to set reminders on her phone to make sure she ate at regular intervals. Her dog followed her around with a worried expression, never leaving her side for longer than he absolutely had to.

  For that, at least, she was grateful. Even now, he slumped on the kitchen floor, looking up at her dolefully. “I’ll be all right,” she said, sinking down beside him to kiss his head and nose. “I promise. Sooner or later, this funk will break and I’ll get answers.”

  His feathery black tail thumped the ground.

  When the doorbell rang, Charlie barked sharply, and Elsa jumped a foot. She glanced at the clock—it was only six a.m. Who could possibly be here?

  Warily, she went to the door and called through it, “Who is it?”

  “Joaquin, Elsa. Let me in.”

  She swung the door open. He wore his clerical collar beneath a heavy winter coat. His hair was too long, as always. “How did you know?”

  “Your friend called me. Julia?”

  Elsa bent her head, ashamed and stung. “Don’t try to rescue me,” she said.

  “Wouldn’t dream of it.”

  But as if she had been waiting for him, Elsa suddenly felt herself give way. She sank to the floor and began to weep. “I just can’t keep pretending,” she said. “I can’t.”

  “I’m sorry I didn’t come sooner, my friend.” Joaquin sank down beside her, and put a steadying hand on her shoulder. Charlie nudged his face into the space beneath her arm. They held her so that she would not fly away into that dark, cold, unfeeling universe and be lost for all time.

  “I am going to take you back to Pueblo,” he said.

  Elsa nodded. It was the only answer.

  PUEBLO, COLORADO

  Chapter Five

  On the day of the spring equinox, Elsa sliced big yellow onions on the counter of the kitchen at San Roque Catholic Church in Pueblo. She was volunteering in the church soup kitchen, serving humanity without serving God. When Joaquin breezed into the room, a sheaf of papers in his hand, she was blinking away onion tears.

  Outside, a blizzard was whirling. She was tired of snow and wet and dark days and she ached for spring. Her sister’s garden was beginning to sprout little shoots of daffodils and tulips, but now they would be buried by the snow.

  “Hey, Walking,” she said, calling him by the nickname she’d given him long ago. “Want to chop onions?”

  “No, thanks.” He leaned on the battered faux wood counter. Then without preamble, he said, “I want you—and maybe Tamsin, if she’ll do it—to run the community garden this summer.”

  “What are you talking about? There’s a community garden?”

  “It was your sister’s idea, last fall. We’re starting it in the vacant lot.” He passed her a sheaf of papers.

  Elsa wiped her hands on the thin cotton apron she wore and took them. On top was a map, with a check paper-clipped to it.

  “The finance committee released some seed money,” he said, and snorted. “Ha-ha.”

  “Ha-ha.” She frowned at the drawing, which showed blocks of gardens, illustrated with curlicues that were meant to be plants. Broccoli, she supposed. Tomatoes and corn. “The lot behind the church? The one between the back door and the apartment block?”

  His dark eyes glittered. “Yep.”

  “This year?”

  “Yep.”

  She handed back the sheaf of papers. “You’re crazy.”

  “O ye of little faith.”

  Slicing an onion in half with a big knife, she gave him a look. “It will take a year just to clean it up.” The lot had long been abandoned, and it was littered with everything from old mattresses to tires. Drug deals transpired there in the dark of night. Not long ago, a stabbing had sent a youth to the hospital.

  Which was, of course, the moment Joaquin the Crusader had had enough. “It’s a good project,” he said now. “Creation. Community.” He gestured with a clean, open palm toward the soup pot. “Food. Fresh and sustainable, just the way you like it.”

  In that moment, Elsa caught the vision. She saw the garden in full green summer, corn tasseling beneath the apartment windows, children plucking tomatoes they’d grown themselves. A breeze blew through her hard, dark soul, just for a second.

  Joaquin smiled. “It will be good for you.”

  “Don’t try to save me,” she said.

  He shook his head. “Never.”

  She took the sheaf of papers back. “I’ll do it for the kids.”

  “I know.” He pointed one long brown finger at a name at the top of the sheet. “That’s Deacon McCoy. He’s got the heavy equipment we’ll need, and he’ll be a good second in command. Nice guy. Big Brother, runs the AA meeting.”

  “On Thursdays.” Elsa blinked. “I’ve seen him around. He comes to get the coffeepot.”

  “Good, then. He should be here today.” He headed for the door. “We on for breakfast in the morning?”

  He liked to make waffles, or sometimes blueberry pancakes, to fortify himself for the weekend. Since she’d limped home just before Christmas, she’d never missed a Friday. She nodded. “I’ll bring the eggs this time.”

  He gave her a thumbs-up. “Gotta go. See ya later.”

  If you were going to do a thing, Elsa believed, there was no point wasting time. When she had the soup simmering on the stove, she washed her hands and headed down to the basement. It was Thursday, so Deacon McCoy was already there, unfolding chairs and setting them down in neat lines. The meeting started at ten-thirty, and many of the attendees wandered into the soup kitchen afterward. It worked out well.

  “Hi,” she said. “I’m Elsa. Do you have a minute?”

  “I do.” He flattened the seat of a chair and straightened, a tall man with sun-darkened skin and an accent as southern as his name. “How can I help you?”

  She stepped off the last step and waved the papers she was holding. “Father Jack wants to turn the vacant lot into a community garden. I seem to have …” She pursed her lips. “Er … volunteered to help get it going.”

  He chuckled. “He has that effect on people.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  “Don’t you already run the soup kitchen?”

  She nodded.

  “Can’t pay much.”

  She brushed hair out of her eyes. “He gave it to me as a kindness and it’s been helpful.”

  He nodded, waiting.

  Elsa took his measur
e. He bore the faint weariness of so many recovered alcoholics—a weight of unresolved regrets still dragging at his ankles—but he was also a good-looking man by any standard, fortyish, with long limbs and wavy dark hair. A lusty sort of man, she thought unexpectedly.

  The combination would ensure any number of women would be happy to volunteer in the garden if he was part of it. “Joaquin said you might be willing to help with the heavy equipment. Is that right?”

  “I might be persuaded.” He glanced at the clock. “Do you mind helping me set up chairs as we talk? Meeting starts in a half hour. Still need to make the coffee.”

  She laid the papers on a nearby table and grabbed a chair, set it in the next row. “What do you think we’ll need?” Elsa asked.

  “I run a landscaping business, so I’ve got earthmovers and—well, pretty much all the necessary equipment.”

  “That helps.”

  “Before, though, we’re gonna need a Dumpster. A big one. Volunteers will throw all the trash into it.”

  “Right.” She placed a chair at her end.

  “A cold frame to get the seeds going.” He grabbed two more chairs. “And then we’ll till it, get ready to plant. Probably want some topsoil.”

  Elsa halted with a chair flat against her body. “I have no idea what I’m doing. I grew a garden as a kid, but nothing this big.”

  “Ain’t nothin’, sweetheart,” he said, and it was impossible to be annoyed with an endearment that was so plainly automatic. “Big or little, it’s dirt and water, sun and paying attention.”

  “So you’ll help?” she asked, putting the chair in place. There was one more space, and he carried a chair forward, meeting her in the middle of the row.

  “Is that bean soup I’m smelling in the air?” he asked.

  “Beans and ham hocks.”

  “Magic words. Save me a bowl, will you? And I’ll come help you clean up later. We’ll map out a plan.”

  “You’ve got it.” She stuck out her hand. “Thanks, Mr. McCoy.”

  “Deacon.” His palms were leathery with hard work, his grip strong and sure. “You’re welcome … what’s your name again?”