The Garden of Happy Endings

by Barbara O'Neal

  But when she entered the house, the smell of it slammed her so hard that she swayed in the foyer, feeling as if she might faint. Beeswax and rotten bananas, dust and a thousand days of hard work. She looked upward at the stairs, following the golden light into her tower, and tears began to run down her face.

  “Ma’am, you’ve only got two hours,” said a woman deputy. “I’d suggest we get moving.”

  “You’re right. I’m sorry.” She shook off everything but the goal. “First my daughter’s room. Deacon, you want to come with me?”

  “On it.” He grabbed some boxes and followed her.

  “I’ll tackle your room,” Elsa said. “What do you want?”

  “Just get as many of my clothes and shoes as you can. All my boots, especially. And the photos.” She halted on the landing. “There’s a trunk in the little room off the kitchen. It’s filled with family photos and scrapbooks. We need to find that.”

  Deacon gently touched her shoulder, directing her up the stairs with his other hand. “Father Jack and I can find it in a little bit. Let’s tackle one thing at a time.”

  Tamsin moved up the stairs, then whirled back. “And my spices! I have a lot of spices and staples.”

  “I’ll get those,” Father Jack said.

  From this vantage point, Tamsin could see both the second floor and the first—polished wood spread out beneath her, adorned with antique Persian rugs she’d found at estate sales and antiques shows across the country. Light fell in golden pools, splashing over an armoire, and a giant fern she’d cultivated for two decades. Bavarian lace curtains hung over the long double-hung windows. She made a little sound.

  “You don’t have much time, honey,” Deacon said behind her. She nodded and forced her heavy feet to move up the stairs, to Alexa’s bedroom.

  It was on the second floor, in the tower, and had windows on all sides. Alexa had fallen in love with it when she was six. “It’s a princess’s room!” she’d cried. They had furnished it with a canopy and hung gauzy curtains over the circle of windows, and held endless sleepovers and tea parties here.

  The canopy was long gone, of course, but the shelves still held Alexa’s dolls and stuffed animals and books from childhood. Alexa saved everything, a sentimental thread her mother shared, and Tamsin suddenly realized, urgently, that her most important task here today was to preserve as many of her daughter’s childhood artifacts as possible. Nothing else really mattered, not even her quilting supplies.

  “Let’s get all the dolls and toys and books,” she said, directing Deacon to the shelves. She pulled open the closet and started pulling out clothes and shoes, as many as she could stuff in. Other years, Alexa would have had her most precious things at school with her, but this semester, of course, she was living with a host family, and had taken only the barest of supplies—her laptop and MP3 player, some of her clothes, a camera.

  Tamsin looked frantically through the drawers, wondering what was precious and what was only stuff. Bras and pretty underwear, pajamas of all sorts—she left them. She grabbed piles of journals, labeled by year, and tucked them into a box, took all the photos from the walls. Anything that looked vaguely mementoish went into a box to be sorted later.

  “I’ll take these down,” Deacon said, hefting two boxes. “You’d better move on and get your own stuff.”

  She turned in a circle, feeling both agony and a weird, lifting freedom. “What does any of this even mean?” she asked.

  “You don’t have time for existential questions,” he said, and headed out of the room.

  And the truth was, Tamsin wanted her fabrics. With one last glance over her shoulder, she raced downstairs, grabbed two good-sized boxes, and ran the three flights up to her studio, feeling in her quads the fact that she had been away from her exercise program—and all these stairs—for a few weeks.

  The door to the room stood open—just as she’d left it. A beam of loss slammed into her chest, making her stagger backward for a moment.

  This. Oh, this.

  How much time had she spent here? Minutes upon hours upon days, weeks, months. Years. Through the windows, she could see clusters of seeds on the elm tree, green promise about to blow into the gardens and lawns of everyone in the neighborhood. The tree had always reminded her of a magic tree from a novel in her childhood, and she loved it as much as she did this house.

  Oh, crap! She just loved it all, and this was maybe the worst day of her life, and if she wanted to cry, she was going to. She started pulling fabric from the shelves, all colors, all weights and threads, blue satin and white gauze and sturdy denim and clouds of silk. Over the years, she had found fabric everywhere, falling in love with patterns and colors—this, for example, this simple peach cotton, such an exquisite color. She put it in the box. All the fabric, squishing it down hard to make it fit. She filled another two boxes with notions, threads and buttons and plastic containers of beads, needles and pins and tape and scissors. She closed the little sewing machine and the longarm quilter, which was too heavy for her to carry down three flights of stairs. She took the small machine to the first floor, ran back up to get the boxes of fabrics.

  For a long moment, she stood there, closing her eyes. “Thank you,” she breathed, remembering thousands of hours of sewing and cutting, with music and color, and sunlight or starlight, flooding through her.

  She ran her hands over the quilts, too. The most recent one she’d finished, the Green Goddess, which had been so highly praised, lay on the table, waiting to be sent to a studio for hanging. She put a hand on it, resentment rising in her. This was by far her best work! It wasn’t fair that it should be sacrificed. The house and all of that belonged to Scott, but these quilts, everything she’d made all these years, belonged solely to her.

  A wicked idea bloomed in her mind. What would happen if she crept back in here to get the quilts later? Maybe not all of them, but enough to sell to get a few hundred dollars on eBay?

  What if she took some today? Glancing over her shoulder, she dumped one of the boxes of fabric and tucked two neatly folded quilts into the bottom of the box. On top of them, she shoved fabric scraps in tightly, covering the quilts. Her heart was pounding. She layered the rest of the fabric on top and carried the box downstairs, avoiding the gaze of the sheriff as she handed it to Father Jack.

  No one even seemed interested. Maybe she should add a few more.

  No, better not to press her luck. Instead, she headed for the bathroom on the main floor, where she closed the door and ran the water, to cover any sound. The window was tall and narrow, made of frosted glass. A bank of lilac bushes bloomed nearby, and would cast purple shadows into the room in springtime. She could fit through it okay, although it would be tight. Most important, it was reachable from the ground because the gas meter was right below it.

  With hands shaking ever so slightly, she flushed the toilet and washed her hands and went back to the front. Deacon was coming in. “Can you and Father Jack get the quilting machine on the desk in my study?” she said.

  “Quilting machine?” asked the female deputy. “That’s not on this list of allowables.”

  “It’s part of my livelihood.”

  The woman gave her a look devoid of sympathy. “I’d love to have a quilting machine. It’s a luxury. It stays.”

  “But—!”

  “You’ve got forty minutes. Finish up.”

  The back of Deacon’s truck was filled with boxes. Where would they put them all in the little house? Tamsin went to the kitchen. Again that pang over the Viking range, the vast sweep of granite countertops, and the cool light coming in through the many windows. “I’ll miss you, too,” she said.

  It didn’t seem real, any of it. How could the life she’d lived for twenty-five years just be over, with no warning at all?

  And yet, it appeared it was. Opening the cabinets, she made sure Father Jack had taken all the spices and condiments. She went through the drawers and grabbed a garlic press and three good knives, then knelt
and took the wok out of a lower cupboard. Thinking of Elsa’s mixed lot of dishes, she took out one bowl, one plate, one of her favorite iced tea glasses, and a knife, a fork, and a spoon. The rest …

  She looked around. The framed art, the gleaming gadgets, the bread box and tall jars of rice, spaghetti, sugar, flour. All the antiques she had carefully collected …

  Now part of her old life.

  Outside, she saw the trunk had been wrestled onto the back of the truck. “I’m done,” she said.

  Elsa put an arm around her shoulder. “Let’s go home.”

  With quiet urgency, she asked, “Did you get the earrings?”

  A slight pause told Tamsin all she needed to know. “The jewelry was already confiscated.”

  Tamsin nodded. She did not allow herself to look back over her shoulder.

  Chapter Fifteen

  On the morning of the blessing of the fields, Elsa arrived early. She drove because she’d prepared food for the potluck, pie and vegetables and a main dish, bringing extra in case some people could not contribute. Sometimes, they ended up with a lot of bread or desserts, which was fine, but it was always good to have more solid food.

  The church fellowship committee would set up tables outside for the potluck later, and she would help with that, but it was several hours before that would happen. She brought her food into the kitchen and put it on the counter.

  This morning, she had heard from the board, who were indeed inviting Allen Tall Pine to be interim minister at her church. He wanted a three-month commitment, which was only a month longer than Elsa would have been away anyway. He would finish at the end of July. By then, Tamsin would be settled.

  But the new development made her nervous, and all morning she had been trying to find ways to come to grips with her crisis of faith, so she could return to the ministry unburdened.

  The first step would be to stop ignoring all of her spiritual practices. She had not meditated or said a prayer since December. That would be a good place to start.

  After she put her food in the kitchen, she headed outside to the courtyard, which was cool and still and shadowy. Charlie pattered behind her, snuffling vainly around the bushes for the cat he’d flushed out before.

  The statue of San Roque stood on a four-foot pedestal, his dog leaping toward him. The saint held a staff and his robe was lifted to show a suppurating wound. Beds of flowers grew to the right and left and behind him. Elsa sat down on one of the benches that faced him. Hyacinths bloomed along the edges of the path, and daffodils had sprouted their long straight leaves. Only two were blooming so far, bright yellow in the shadows.

  Settling into a familiar position, hands loose in her lap, back straight, she took a long, slow breath and let it out. Even if it turned out that there was no God to hear her, she found comfort in the practice of breathing. In centering herself. Some people kept a journal. Elsa had always prayed.

  For now, she let her hands lie loosely in her lap and looked up at San Roque, who was one of her favorite saints. Technically, he was called Saint Roch here, but she liked his Spanish name. He was a gentle priest who had fallen to plague or leprosy—the stories varied. Everyone deserted him but his dog, who not only stayed by his side, but healed his suppurating wounds by licking them. Ever after, the saint was known as the patron of dogs and pilgrims and plagues.

  She was fond of him in part because she had not noticed him before the camino. But there, San Roque presided over many little churches, always with his dog at his knee. She knew his prayer, and parts of it floated through her mind as she sat there, breathing in the sweet softness of the spring morning, San Roque, deliver us … from the scourges of God … preserve our bodies from contagious diseases and our souls from the contagion of sin … Assist us to make good use of health, to bear sufferings with patience …

  The words circled through her mind, easy, gentle, as she looked at the saint’s face and his dog and the flowers. Save our souls from the contagion of sin. Despair was very much a sin in the Catholic Church. Even more so within the metaphysical movement, which proclaimed thought shaped everything.

  By either measure, she had been in a distinctly unholy place for six months. “I don’t know how to change this,” she said aloud. “You will have to do it for me this time.”

  As if she’d just put down a very heavy suitcase, she felt relief drench her. Charlie settled on her foot, a paw draped over her arch.

  One habit of prayer she’d always practiced had been to ask for blessing on those in her world who were struggling. This morning, she began with her sister.

  When they had returned to the house after dropping off most of Tamsin’s things at a storage unit Elsa squeezed out of the budget, she had fallen onto the couch and lain there for a long time, not speaking, not sleeping, not crying. The boxes of her fabrics were piled in her small bedroom, and she had arranged her spices in the kitchen, along with the single plate, glass, bowl, and place setting of silver.

  Elsa sat nearby, not speaking, a hand on her sister’s ankle. Eventually, she got up and began to cook for the potluck, insisting at one point that Tamsin come have a small plate of bread and cheese and a glass of wine. She downed them dutifully, then went to her room and closed the door and stayed there the rest of the night.

  The action caused an echo in the chambers of Elsa’s memory. When they were children, Elsa had often been invisible in Tamsin’s life. She was always closing her door on Elsa, shutting her out, keeping her at arm’s length. Added to that, their parents had been weary of parenthood by the time Elsa arrived. It had been, in many ways, a very lonely house.

  No wonder Elsa had found such pleasure in Joaquin’s raucous household of what often felt like hundreds.

  When Tamsin was a senior in college, Elsa a freshman in high school, their father died cleanly and suddenly, of a heart attack. Their mother, Helen, had never been one to fuss. She grieved quietly and simply, then found another husband within a year, a rancher from the northern part of the state. He, too, was widowed, with grown children, and he lived in relative luxury in a stone house on nine hundred acres in the foothills north of Denver.

  Elsa had been a dutiful child, but she’d absolutely refused to move to a ranch in the country, 150 miles away from her high school, her boyfriend, her life. She was about to start her junior year of high school, and she could live on her own in the house. She had a job as a clerk at a bookstore. It couldn’t pay all her bills, but her soon-to-be stepfather, eager to have his wife to himself, was more than happy to subsidize her.

  And Tamsin, as it turned out. She arrived on Elsa’s doorstep one rainy Saturday in October, all of her belongings piled into her car. She’d graduated with a degree in fine arts from CU Boulder, and had been working part-time at a small Denver museum when she found out that her boyfriend was married. Furious, brokenhearted, she fled the big city for home.

  That was the year that the sisters had solidified their relationship. Tamsin was enough older that she could offer her sister some guidance, and Elsa was a steadying influence on her flyaway nature. They took turns cooking and cleaning and shopping, and kept each other company, and learned to respect each other’s ways.

  Tamsin did not mind that Joaquin slept over when he could manage it. Elsa did not mind when Tamsin met a man more than a dozen years her senior, who was smitten with her at first sight. Tamsin was cautious, but enjoyed Scott’s attention, and made sure he was not married. He was a stockbroker and investment counselor. Over time, she’d fall in love with his big booming laugh, his tenderness toward her, his hunger to make a home and family. Within a year, Tamsin married Scott at a very fancy, upscale wedding in the Bahamas.

  Sitting now at the foot of San Roque, Elsa frowned. She would have put a large sum of money down on the fact that Scott had adored Tamsin and Alexa. How could he have done this to them?

  “If any saint is listening, please bless my sister. Bring a sense of meaning into her life, and heal this terrible wound.” Elsa stood, plucked a hy
acinth, and angled it delicately across San Roque’s foot. It couldn’t hurt anything.

  She started violently when Joaquin said, “Good morning.” He laughed gently and touched her shoulder. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know you had not heard me. Were you praying?”

  “Thinking, mainly.”

  He brushed away some dirt from the statue’s podium. Touched the flower Elsa had placed on the saint’s foot. “Tamsin?”

  “Yes. Let’s be sure she has plenty to do.”

  “She has the garden.”

  “She also liked serving food at the soup kitchen. We’ll have her do something there.” They fell into step, walking toward the end of the courtyard and into the sunshine, where they also stopped in sync. Each of them lifted an arm to shade their eyes from the sun. It made Elsa smile, how easily their bodies meshed into the old patterns.

  “Look at that,” she said. Plots had been measured and fenced, with a placard in front of each with a number, and soon, a name. “That’s your doing, Father Jack. A trash heap into a garden.”

  “It is beautiful,” he said. He looked down at her. “It was your doing, too.”

  “Mostly Deacon, I think. He’s spent a lot of hours out here.”

  Joaquin nodded, looked back at the field. “You know he was in prison, don’t you?”

  She inclined her head. “Don’t do that.”

  “What?”

  “Try to discount him because you think he might be attracted to me.”

  He swallowed, giving himself away. “Are you attracted to him, too?”

  For one long moment, she let herself admire her old lover’s beautiful mouth, but it was the fantasy of Deacon’s naked back that rose in her vision. “He’s not my type.”

  Some of the tension left Joaquin’s shoulders. “I agree.” He turned toward the rectory. “Want some breakfast? We missed yesterday.”

  Elsa shook her head, taking a step back from him. “No thanks. I’m going to wander out and look at everything before we get started.”

  He paused for a single beat, regarding her. Then nodded. “See you after a while, then.” He clapped his hands together and admired the sky. “It’s a beautiful day for a blessing!”