The Garden of Happy Endings

by Barbara O'Neal

  Elsa raised her face to the blazing blue sky. “It is.”

  Joaquin did not go eat. Instead, he took his betraying flesh into the chapel and knelt before the Blessed Mother, squeezing his eyes tight, pressing his fists to his forehead.

  It was not so easy to have Elsa around like this. He’d known that it would be this way, which was why he had resisted bringing her home, despite the prompts.

  In many ways, he took pleasure in her proximity, especially the ease they felt in each other’s company, in the unexpected and comforting way they fell into sync, as they had just outside. Her company for Friday morning breakfasts felt like one of the truest things in his life.

  And yet, there was the trouble, too. He had not become a priest because he’d fallen out of love with her. He had answered a call so insistent that God had left him no choice.

  “Blessed Mother,” he prayed now, fiercely. Thick emotion came into his throat. “I had to bring her back here because you insisted, and it is true that she was broken and needed to come. But the struggle is much more difficult than I imagined. Help me. I have found joy in my work, but I am only a man.”

  When Elsa and Joaquin had parted ways after the camino, they had agreed that they would not speak for a year, to give both of them time to get used to the new order between them.

  Joaquin had enrolled in seminary, while Elsa wandered in Europe. She never spoke much of that time, and he had not asked. He was afraid she had suffered badly.

  One year later, she returned to the States and was admitted to the Unity ordination program. Their first contact was when she called to tell him the news, and it had shocked him deeply that she, who had been more devout than he at times, should turn her back on the Catholic Church. She said simply, “If I could be a priest, that’s what I would do. Since I don’t have that option, I’ll be a minister.”

  Hope surged in him. “You could be a nun.”

  “No,” she said firmly. “I will not. It is not the same thing and you know it.”

  Ever since, all these years, all these years, they had talked on the phone at least once a week. They shared their path through their religious educations, through their first assignments and roles in church leadership. Every now and then, they had seen each other for a couple of days, over the holidays, or if one happened to be close to the city where the other one lived.

  Joaquin had settled, with more joy than he had suspected he’d feel, into the life of a priest. He was fulfilled. Devoted. Every morning when he awakened, he knew exactly why he was on the planet—to serve and help others, to ease their way, to shepherd them if he could, into more meaningful lives.

  He thought that he’d released his carnal impulses. No other woman had tempted him in the slightest, even when they were trying their utmost to do so. It was only Elsa who stirred him. Elsa who tempted him.

  Her continued presence now underscored everything he’d given up for the priesthood—wife, love, family.

  With a deep breath, he rose, and instead of fixing his breakfast, he went to his sparsely furnished bedroom, changed into his running clothes, and headed out, a rosary wrapped around his wrist. It was a good morning for a long run.

  As he ran, he prayed. Holy Mary, mother of God, blessed art thou among women …

  Elsa was helping to attach thin cotton tablecloths to the tables that were set up in the center of the field when Tamsin arrived. She looked wan and tired, but her hair had been washed and pulled off of her face, and she’d applied a little blush. She carried a pot of noodles and a box of doughnuts. She had borrowed the money for the doughnuts from Elsa, who gave it gladly.

  “Where are the boys?” Tamsin asked.

  Smiling, Elsa pointed. “You’re going to be such a hero.”

  “I let them down before.” She strode toward them, tall and lean and still gorgeous. Spying her and the box, the boys leapt forward, yelling. Calvin, dressed in a plaid man’s shirt that hung down to his knees, flung his arms around her waist. Her hand went to his head.

  Elsa nodded to herself. Perfect.

  Deacon came over. “How’s she doing this morning?”

  “She’s here,” Elsa replied. “That’s a lot.”

  “And you? How are you this fine morning, Miss Elsa?” He held the tablecloth while she attached a plastic clamp. “Excited?”

  “I am.” She couldn’t help but grin at him. “I have the seeds and plan for the kids’ garden, and they’re so excited, and I have my personal packets of seeds, too. I can’t wait to get started. How ’bout you?”

  “I started seedlings inside, so I have actual plants. If you’re real nice, I’ll share with you.”

  “Well,” she said, blinking with pretend innocence, “I did make pecan pie and collard greens for my contributions today.”

  He sucked his lower lip into his mouth. “Collards with bacon?”

  “Of course. They are very good, if I do say so myself. I even brought some hot pepper sauce.”

  “Oh, hell, sweetheart, you can have all my bedding plants for that.”

  She laughed. “What did you grow?”

  “Come see.” He led her to his truck, where three flats of seventy-five plants were waiting. He pointed. “Onions, peppers—both sweet and hot—lettuce, and of course, collards.”

  “You must have started planting the minute we brought this up!”

  “Pretty much.” He jumped easily onto the bed. “I knew people would need them. Let’s carry this over to the rest of the supplies.” He picked up a flat and put it in her arms, pointing her toward the place where he’d set up rakes and shovels and seed packets, all for rent or sale at very low prices. “Your one-stop garden shop,” he said.

  “This is terrific! Where did you get all the tools?”

  “Culled them from every Goodwill and Salvation Army from here to Denver. The handles are a little splintery on some, but they’ll work.”

  She looked at all of the supplies, thought of all the work he’d done, the time he’d spent, and put a hand on his arm. “Thank you, Deacon. You’ve done so much. You’re my hero, you know?”

  He looked at her, and Elsa didn’t turn away, wondering if there might really be something blooming between them.

  A sense of anticipation skittered over the top of her skin, brushing the back of her neck, her elbows, her belly. His eyes were shaded by a baseball cap, so their color was a simple dark blue, and his mouth was very still. He put his hand over hers. “Thank you,” he said simply. The words were craggy.

  Yes, she thought, this was something possible. The thought made her smile. “Let’s get this party started.”

  Together they carried the flats over and put them on a table. Deacon used a pair of heavy shears to cut the plastic trays into singles and ceremoniously handed Elsa a collard, a tomato, and an onion. “They’ll go fast.”

  “Thank you,” she said. “When I have a good harvest, I’ll return your kindness by making you a nice meal. How’s that?”

  “I’ll look forward to it.”

  By ten, the families were gathered in the field. Deacon’s truck was parked at the north end, nearest the apartments. He stood in the bed with Joaquin, while the crowd gathered around them, young and old, children and parents, teens from the church looking scrubbed and shiny. Elsa stood next to Tamsin.

  Joseph stood to one side with his drum, and as everyone gathered, he banged it once to get their attention. Faces turned toward Father Jack. He wore his vestments and his face was darkly handsome above them, his hair falling over his forehead, as ever, too straight and slick to stay in place.

  “Good morning!” he called.

  Elsa did not go to Mass, so she wasn’t used to seeing Joaquin in his priestly attire. It made him look different. Powerful. With a cold little shock, she realized that she’d never heard him offer a sermon or a blessing or anything else. A tiny ripple of fear moved through her and she reached for her sister’s arm and slid her hand around it. The sisters stepped closer together.

  Joaqu
in said, “We are here this morning to ask a blessing on these fields, that they might be fertile and nourishing and life-giving, that they will offer us a chance to build community and relationships and bring more of God’s love and light into the world.”

  His voice, Elsa thought, was booming and rich, just the right timbre to carry over the heads of the people. He spread his hands, palms up. His fingers were long and graceful. A woman murmured behind them, “We are so lucky to have Father Jack!”

  “ ‘Our help is in the name of the Lord,’ ” Father Jack said in invitation.

  The crowd murmured, “Who made heaven and earth.”

  “The Lord be with you!”

  “May he also be with you.”

  It had been more than sixteen years since Elsa had heard these words, since she had turned her back on the Catholic Church for the second time, in Santiago. The sound of them strummed a forgotten chord in her chest, and she found herself vibrating unexpectedly with it. She looked away from Joaquin, frowning a little, suddenly apprehensive.

  Deacon stood with his arms folded, but Elsa saw him gesture to someone in the crowd. Then she spied the three boys, sneaking through the rows of people, tiptoeing with exaggerated silence toward some goal only they understood. Deacon shook his head. They halted, making gestures of protest. He pulled his brows together, pointed. Deflated, they slunk away.

  Father Jack said, “Let us pray.”

  The crowd rustled, bowing their heads. Elsa watched, detached, and let the prayer glance over her.

  “God, from whom every good has its beginning and from whom it receives its increase, we beg you to hear our prayers, so that what we begin for your honor and glory may be brought to a happy ending by the gift of your eternal wisdom; through Christ our Lord.”

  “Amen,” said the crowd.

  Across the field of Elsa’s memory walked a girl, always one of the smallest in her class. Her hair was pulled mercilessly back into a braid her mother wrestled into place every morning, bemoaning the wild curls. It wasn’t until junior high that Elsa had rebelled against the braid and realized that her scalp didn’t have to ache all the time.

  But this girl still wore the braid, and she wore modest dresses to church, even then preferring simple straight lines to fancier styles. She loved Mass. Loved the call, the invitation, the smell of incense, the bells. The church on summer mornings smelled of roses, of the Blessed Mother, with whom Elsa found much more acceptance than her own mother gave her. That devout, passionate girl stood in the nave, burning with the desire to serve.

  Joaquin’s voice drifted through the vision. “And at our lowly coming, through the merits and prayers of your saints, may demons flee and the Angel of Peace be at hand …”

  The words strummed over the strings of the devoted young girl Elsa had been, and the emotions of long ago swelled in her woman’s body.

  “Ow,” Tamsin whispered, pulling her arm away. “You’re holding on too tightly.”

  “Sorry.”

  Elsa focused on Joaquin, who was now blurred into Father Jack, the two parts of him crossing like a hologram, first the priest, then the man standing in front. He held up a chalice of holy water.

  “That you bless these fields,” he said, and there was now a new, more powerful and commanding tone to his voice. As if he did embody something bigger than himself, and all those rituals that he’d partaken in at his solemn ordination—his hands rubbed with oil sanctified in mystic rituals on Maundy Thursday, the ancient Latin words spoken over his young head—had truly transformed him. Elsa found herself transfixed as she watched his familiar face become something new.

  “We beg you to hear us,” the crowd rumbled in response.

  “That you bless and consecrate these fields!”

  “We beg you to hear us.”

  “That you bless …” His voice seemed to amplify and deepen, spreading over the entire block. “… and consecrate and protect from diabolical destruction these fields.”

  “We beg you to hear us.”

  “That you mercifully ward off and dispel from this place all lightning, hailstorms, destructive tempests, and harmful floods.”

  “We beg you to hear us.”

  Elsa found she was trembling as the priest led the people in an Our Father, which she had learned to call the Lord’s Prayer, the words so dear and old and powerful that she had to close her eyes. The people chanted it, each voice dear and sweet and true, one lower, one higher, all of them offering up themselves and their hopes and fears.

  “And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. Send forth your spirit and all things shall be re-created, and you shall renew the face of the earth and the Lord shall manifest His goodness, and the earth shall yield her fruit.”

  Elsa became aware that she was shaking, and tears were rolling down her cheeks. In her ministry, she had met many, many refugees from the Catholic Church. Often a group of “recovering Catholics,” as they called themselves, would share horror stories of what they had escaped—the fear and the inflexibility.

  Elsa always wanted to say, “But what about the beauty and the ritual? What about the Blessed Mother? What about confession and repentance, which on a purely practical level is a very powerful tool?”

  Standing in the field, with the sun overhead and the sound of the first Catholic ritual that she had heard in a very long time ringing through her body, Elsa admitted to herself that she missed Catholicism desperately.

  The first time she turned her back on God, Elsa was fourteen. As a child, Elsa had burned with a dream of the priesthood for herself. Joaquin was an altar boy, a task that was closed to her. In some places, she had heard, girls were allowed to be altar servers, but there were none in Pueblo, not even any in Colorado that she had ever heard of.

  None of the other girls cared, but Elsa burned to perform the rituals. She had begged her mother to talk to the priest, and lobbied Joaquin to put in a good word for her, had even written a shy letter to the priest to request his consideration.

  He wouldn’t even talk to her about it. The subject seemed to make him angry, and Elsa had learned to avoid it.

  But every time Joaquin donned the robes and carried in the cross, she sat in the nave with the other parishioners, her blood so alive with jealousy that she feared sometimes her veins might suddenly burst into rivers of flame. She ached to wear the satiny robes, to carry the cross, to step into the holy space of the sanctuary and offer the priest water for his hands, and the chalice to be filled with the holy blood of Christ.

  Oh, the honor of it!

  For two years, she had been sick with this longing. She would overcome the sin of envy, confess it, and try to focus on the things that were open to her. Not being a nun, which everyone said she should be. Nuns always seemed so subservient in her eyes, only powerful when there were no priests to lord over them.

  No, she didn’t want to be a nun. She wanted to be a priest, a leader in the church. Surely, she thought, by the time she grew up things would be different. Why would God plant this fierce hunger for the priesthood in her if she wasn’t meant to follow that path?

  Over and over, week in and week out, she boiled with longing, fell prey to her jealousy, then confessed and started over.

  One afternoon, her mother dropped her off at the church early. Later there would be a meeting of the Youth for Christ, but she was the first person there. She carried her potluck dish into the kitchen then, emboldened by the silence in the building, wandered up the hallway. The nave was empty.

  Elsa slipped inside, telling herself that she was only going to sit and pray for a while, perhaps light a candle. On one side of the sanctuary reigned the Blessed Mother in her blue robes, her kindly face seeming to encourage Elsa to move forward.

  She sat in the very first row, her hands in her lap. Candles flickered in petition on either side of the nave, to Mary and to St. Therese. There was no sound, not anywhere in the church, and it wasn’t the sort of local spot where old ladies would come and si
t and pray all day. They were home now, fixing supper. The priest was probably going to have his supper soon too, in the rectory.

  She glanced over her shoulder, her heart pounding, and stood up. Before she could chicken out, she moved toward the sanctuary. At the foot of the stairs, she stopped, and looked around again to make sure no one else was about.

  Then she climbed the steps into the sanctuary, her heart in her throat. She could feel the veil of holiness as she crossed into it, a hush of grace, as if Jesus himself held it in His embrace. She could feel it on her skin, and taste it in her throat.

  Cloaked in awe, in joy, she turned and faced the pews. Standing there, she imagined herself resplendent in the robes of a priest, vestments shining over her shoulders, and she raised her arms, quietly reciting the priest’s part of the call to worship: “Our help is in the name of the Lord.”

  She imagined the swell of voices returning, Who made heaven and earth.

  “The Lord be with you!” she said, spreading her hands in priestly fashion.

  Imaginary voices responded, May He also be with you.

  A swell of joy moved through her body, almost lifting her feet off the floor, and she moved toward the altar table, still imagining she was the priest, forgetting that she was only a girl. She ached to ring the little bell, but did not dare. Instead she lifted the chalice, feeling the vibration of love and tradition and God in the very molecules of it, her head light as down, her heart swelling with the honor of it. Oh, please, she said to the heavens. Please let me be a priest.

  The first blow caught her across the ear, and she fell sideways, dropping the chalice on the floor. “Stinking daughter of Eve!” the priest roared. “How dare you foul this sacred space with your fetid, unholy sin!”

  Elsa scrambled to capture the chalice before it rolled down the steps. “I’m sorry—”

  He hauled her up by her arms, his fingers digging into her flesh like pincers. His face only inches away from her, he screamed, “How dare you!”