The Garden of Happy Endings

by Barbara O'Neal

  Elsa yanked away from him, terrified, guilty, and cowered, tears rising in her eyes. “I’m sorry! I just wanted to know how it felt to be a priest!”

  His face was purple with rage. “Women cannot serve! By their very existence they are the containers of all evil, the original sin. You have fouled this holy place!”

  Elsa began to back away, and stumbled, falling to her knees. She picked up the chalice and offered it to him, ducking away as he released a howl of such fury that for a moment Elsa feared he might kill her.

  “Get out!” he cried. “Get out! Get out, get out!”

  Sobbing, she scrambled to her feet, snot running down her face. And there, at the back of the nave, were four of the boys who did serve. They had expressions of horror on their faces, and at first, Elsa mistook it for pity, that they were shocked that the priest should behave so badly.

  But as she ran toward them, some of them her friends, boys she had known for years, one of them spit on her. “What were you doing?” Another pinched her, hard, on the upper arm.

  She could feel the danger in them even before the priest screamed, “Out, Eve’s whore!”

  She fled. And she did not return for four years.

  * * *

  In the field, listening to the words she had so loved once upon a time, she could still feel the horror of that long-ago day. As an adult, she saw that the priest had been deeply wrong, but that didn’t change what had happened.

  As a high school senior project, Elsa had volunteered for a local political agency that provided shelter, food, and financial assistance to the immigrants, legal and illegal, who swarmed north from Mexico to work in the fields. It was led by a devoted and passionate nun.

  Dorothy brought Elsa back to the Church. She led by example, providing the hands of God for the lost and hungry and lonely. She connected Elsa to the very best of the Church, the arm that served the homeless and hungry and poor, all over the world, in concrete ways.

  So she returned to Mass. She studied comparative religions, trying to find her place in the Church and its place in her life. She walked the Camino as a pilgrim, an act of petition that had ended with punishment and loss.

  Joaquin’s voice, not Father Jack’s, said with vast kindness, in the fields, “Almighty God, we humbly appeal to your kindness, asking that you pour out the dew of your blessing on these fields.”

  Elsa felt tears streaming, streaming, streaming down her face, and it suddenly made her furious. Abruptly, she turned and made her way blindly through the crowd. Joaquin’s voice followed, filled with numinous power: “Wipe out any infertility from this land, thus filling the hungry with an abundance of good things, so that the poor and needy may praise your wondrous name forever and ever.”

  “Amen,” said the crowd.

  She had no idea where she was even going, just that she needed to leave the crowd. She made her way to the courtyard, where bright sunlight now poured down over San Roque, and there was her own dog, asleep at his feet.

  He leapt up when he saw her, big feathery tail wagging apologetically. She knelt and put her arms around his shoulders and let go of the tears. They were not noisy, but violent, silent heaves. Charlie made tiny whimpering sounds, and eventually shifted to lick her face, her neck, putting his paw on her shoulder to hold her still.

  What was she mourning? The Church, Kiki, her own lost ministry? It was all a tangle, triggered painfully by the familiarity of the words she had so loved.

  As she leaned into her dog’s hot fur, letting him comfort her, she said to the universe at large, “Show me that you are really there. And where I’m meant to be. Where do you want me to go?” She squeezed her eyes tight. “I am so lost.”

  Then, aware there would be others drifting this way soon, she got to her feet and headed into the church. Charlie padded behind her in concern, even following her into the ladies’ room, where she washed her face with cold water—very, very cold water—to ease the red around her eyes and mouth. She looked at herself in the mirror. “What the heck was that?”

  Her sad eyes looked back at her. He deserted you.

  Joaquin.

  And God.

  Quite a pair.

  And yet, the people still needed to be fed. They still needed the help of those who would not judge them. Today she would help the children plant their garden, and plant the collards Deacon had given her, and give her sister a task to do. She would simply be present, for anyone. For all of them.

  She did not need God to tell her that. “Come on, Charlie,” she said, squaring her shoulders, pulling open the door. “Let’s go plant some corn.”

  Everyone was headed toward their plots as she returned to the field. Elsa did the same. Tamsin was in their garden, gloves on her hands, looking at the soft open space with fierce intent. “Did you bring the map I drew?”

  From her back pocket, Elsa pulled the folded map. “Yes. This is a sketch. We need to add collards.”

  “Okay.” Tamsin pointed to the northwest corner of the plot. “Corn there. And beans. Sunflowers along that edge.”

  Elsa knelt in the earth, smelling the heady, damp fertility of it. Joseph and Joaquin were rounding the fields, drumming and dispersing holy water. Elsa ignored them when they paused by their plot, but a sprinkle of water touched her head. She glared at Joaquin, who had done it on purpose. He winked and moved along in his white satin vestments.

  She thought of roosters crowing in the twilight of dawn, and smelled, briefly, the sweetness of churros frying in hot fat.

  Long ago.

  With her spade, she made a row. It clicked against something in the dirt. She paused, and put her fingers in the soil, fluttering around until she pulled out a string of beads. They were pale green quartz, carved like leaves. Even with dirt all over them, she could see they were beautiful.

  Then she noticed the pale pink carved quartz roses between each decade of leaves. And the clear quartz cross at the bottom. A rosary.

  For one long minute, Elsa held them up, shaking her head. Light touched the beads, setting them aglow, and she could see the rosary would be very beautiful once she washed it. “Good start,” she said aloud, “but it’s going to take more than that.”

  “Who are you talking to?” Tamsin said.

  “No one,” Elsa said, and tucked the beads into her pocket.

  In a plot on the other side of the field, Calvin helped his mother. Paris had specially asked for the day off from the nursing home, and it was good to be outside with her son. She had too many seeds, she knew that, but when she’d found out she could buy them with her food stamps, she’d gone to the dollar store and picked out a bunch of things. Lettuce and peas, which they could eat early; potatoes, which she’d taken from old potatoes in the house, red potatoes growing eyes that she cut into pieces like her mama had always done, and now planted deep. “This is good earth,” she told Calvin. “See how dark it is?”

  He nodded seriously, and smelled it when she did, his big eyes always taking everything in. The sun sparkled over the top of his head and she could see his handsome daddy in him, but some of her, too, in his good cheekbones and his smile. “I still don’t like peas, though.”

  “Maybe you’ll like them better when they’re fresh and you pick them yourself.”

  “How are y’all doing here?” asked Mario’s Big Brother. She had to squint to look up at him, and he noticed and moved around to the other side. “Sorry about that.”

  “We’re doing fine, thank you. Got the lettuce and peas in, and fixing to put in squash and corn.”

  “You’ve done this before, I think.” His smile was kind, lighting up the sadness in his eyes. “You’re a Southerner, like me.”

  “Kentucky,” she said, and ducked her head, suddenly wishing that she could go back there, to her old town and her family. It had been rash, leaving. She picked up a packet of pumpkin seeds and shook it. The big seeds rattled inside. “How about you?”

  “Mississippi, long time ago now.”

  “
Deacon, look!” Calvin said, showing him a small cellophane package of beans. “These here are my magic beans. We got ’em in school. You know about magic beans? They grow to the sky!”

  “You don’t say!” Deacon admired the seeds. “I can’t wait to see what happens!”

  Calvin looked at the seeds very closely, his shy look. “Maybe a vine will grow all the way to heaven and I’ll ask Jesus for a dog.”

  “Hmmm.”

  “Grown-ups never believe in things like that, but sometimes they’re true. I know it.”

  “I reckon you’re right, son. We need children to remind us that there’s magic in the world yet. Thank you.”

  Calvin looked up. “You’re welcome.”

  “Ms. Jennings, would it be all right with you if Calvin comes with Mario and me sometimes? And maybe it’d be okay if I took the little tyke on his own now and again?”

  Paris raised her chin. She knew all about how somebody could seem to be nice and end up being not nice at all. “I’ll think about it.”

  “That’s fine, honey. Let me know.” He straightened. “You have fun now, Calvin.”

  Calvin turned and looked at his mother. “If Jesus sends me a dog, you have to let me keep it, you know. It would be a sin not to.”

  She laughed softly, pretty sure nobody was delivering a dog. “I hope he sends bags of dog food, too, ’cuz we sure can’t afford it.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  Elsa had bought a dozen popsicle sticks from the church booth run by the teens, and now she stuck the last empty seed packet onto a stick and poked it into the corner of a square Tamsin had paced off with her feet, insisting it would be easier to grow the garden if it wasn’t arranged in long rows. “There,” Elsa said. “Done.” She stood up next to her sister and slapped her gloves together. “What do you think of that?”

  The squares were visible now. “We have to get something to mark the edges,” Tamsin said. “Maybe string and spikes or something like that would be easy. Or rocks.”

  “Good idea. After lunch though. I’m starving.” She took off her gloves and slapped one against Tamsin’s arm. “How about you?”

  She shrugged.

  “Let’s go wash our hands.”

  Walking through the middle of the field with her sister, Elsa peeked into the gardens, smiling at the other farm-holders, who smiled back. The sound of happy voices and laughter filled the air. Children chased one another through the pathways between plots, and not a few dogs trotted along behind them, Charlie among them. He spied Elsa and came running forward, his tongue lolling. “You look thirsty, big boy. C’mon, let’s find a trough for all these dogs, shall we?”

  In the kitchen, she found an old stainless steel bowl and carried it outside to the little bricked area by the statue of San Roque. Deep, cool shade grew behind him. She filled the bowl and put it down in the shade, and whistled for the dogs, who came racing and dove into the water with eager slurping, pushing one another out of the way.

  Tamsin had gone ahead to wash her hands and she came out now with her hair loose down her back, her face and hands clean. A little sunburn gave her cheekbones some color. “You and your dogs,” she said with a shake of her head. “It would never even occur to me to get a bowl and give them some water.”

  “It’s not your job. You know how to make gardens grow in squares.”

  Tamsin smiled. “I’ll meet you over there.”

  Once the dogs had been watered, Elsa refilled the bowl for the last time and headed inside to the ladies’ room. She had it to herself. The first thing she did was pull the rosary out of her pocket, running it under warm water to wash away the dirt. It was a beauty, pale green leaves carved of what might have been jade, alternating with roses carved out of pink quartz, all strung on heavy string. Substantial.

  She dried it and tucked it back in her pocket, taking a moment then to try to tame her hair and wash the dust off her face. The sun had kissed her, too, had made her look rested and healthy. Thinking of how lovely her sister looked, she plucked at her plain T-shirt, wishing she had a bit more chest, or some extraordinary feature, but she was honest with herself. Her eyes were an ordinary dark blue, her dark hair too curly, her face too full of angles to be pretty.

  She plucked a few more curls from her tight bun, letting them frame her face a little, fall down her neck. Better.

  When she returned to the field to join her sister at the tables that had been set up, Tamsin was already sitting with Deacon, making him laugh. “Hi, guys,” Elsa said.

  Deacon stood up. “We’ve been waiting for you so we can all eat together.”

  “Oh! Thanks.” She didn’t bother to sit down, because her stomach growled in earnest. “Let’s do it.”

  But when they got to the food, the collards were gone, the bowl empty with a lone green leaf at the bottom.

  “Poor Deacon,” Tamsin said, her hand on his arm. “Look at that face.”

  He glanced at Elsa and she saw that he was truly disappointed. “I’m so sorry.”

  “I think I’m gonna have to beg for that dinner you keep promising.”

  Flustered, Elsa said, “Um. Yes. When?”

  He leaned into her slightly. “Soon.”

  “Well, aside from Wednesday nights, when I’m busy with prep for the soup kitchen, we don’t really have much on our schedule, do we, sis?”

  Tamsin plucked a single slice of cucumber from her plate airily. “Speak for yourself. I have a job.”

  “You do?” Elsa laughed. “What? Where? When do you start?”

  Tamsin unmistakably blushed. “Well, it’s not exactly the Ritz. Fabric department at Walmart, thanks to the quilting list. Somebody there knew somebody in the fabric department and they called me this morning.”

  “Tamsin, that’s great. You’ll even like it.”

  She lifted one brow. “I guess. It’s something.”

  Elsa spied a dish at the end of the row. “Look! There’s one piece of pie left, Deacon. You want it?”

  “Split it with me?”

  “I can make me a pie whenever I feel like it,” she said, leaning over to scoop up the lone slice. She put it on his plate. “You’ve worked really hard on this project. I appreciate it.”

  “It’s you who’s made it happen, Elsa.” For one little moment, that vine twined around them again, binding ankle to ankle, as he looked at her. His eyes twinkled, but there was also something solid and real there. “But you’re welcome.”

  “It was all three of you,” Tamsin added as Joaquin joined them.

  “What was?” he asked.

  “Worked hard on the garden.” Tamsin put a square of red Jell-O and fruit on her plate. It wiggled, still firmly set despite sitting on the table for a half hour. Anemic fruit cocktail grapes peeked through the gelatin. “Don’t forget that Father Jack started the whole thing.”

  “Jeez, Tamsin, you are such a flirt.”

  She tossed her head with exaggerated coquetry. “Not everyone has such a handsome priest.”

  Joaquin grinned, and half the old ladies who were politely serving up food swooned. They urged him to try their special dishes. “Have a piece of my chocolate cake, Father,” said a woman with clipped short black hair and hands gnarled by arthritis. “And my macaroni and cheese,” said another. By the time he reached the end of the line, his paper plate was groaning.

  They all sat together, though before Joaquin could actually take a bite, a man in his forties, dressed tidily in Clothes Purchased Just for Gardening, said, “Father, may I have a word with you?”

  “Of course.” Joaquin grabbed a cookie from the plate and walked away with the man, his head bent politely.

  Tamsin asked, “Did they do that to you, Elsa? Talk to you all the time they need something?”

  “Of course. That’s the nature of the job.” She took a bite of the macaroni and cheese; it really was quite good. “Did you taste this, Deacon?”

  “No. Are you offering?”

  She forked up a bite and put it on his
plate.

  “Didn’t it drive you crazy, people needing you constantly like that?”

  Elsa thought of the long line of people waiting to hug her after services, how some of them would have tears of illumination in their eyes, and how some would hold on hard for a long moment, conscious of the other people behind them, but unwilling to let go too fast.

  She thought again, with longing, of the way the congregation had looked in her direction when she stood up to speak, their upturned faces expectant. “No.” She took a breath. “I loved it.”

  “How long are you on sabbatical?” Deacon asked.

  “It was supposed to be for six months, which meant I would go back in June. But there have been some complications.”

  “You didn’t tell me that,” Tamsin said.

  Elsa waved a hand. “The man who took over for me had to have emergency knee surgery, so he’s out. They’ve brought someone else in, and he wanted a three-month commitment.” She speared a potato from the salad. “So, now I’m here through July.”

  “Are you going to go back?” Tamsin asked. “I thought you were done with it.”

  “I don’t want to be. I just don’t …” She didn’t even know how to express her doubts. “I just have to figure some things out.”

  Deacon, sitting beside her, said quietly, “I told you my daddy was a preacher.”

  “Really?” Tamsin asked.

  He nodded, still talking to Elsa. “He lost his faith for a time, struggled with it for a year or two, but in those days, there wasn’t any way for him to say that out loud, that maybe he hadn’t been called by a God that maybe didn’t even exist. He had to keep preaching.”

  She knew he was trying to be helpful. In her pocket was the rosary she’d found, a knot that was somehow hot against the fold of her leg. “It was a lot harder in those days.”

  “I don’t know about that. It’s always hard to …” He poked the potato salad. “Be an emissary. A person of God.”

  The press of emotion that had so overwhelmed her earlier rose again against the back of her throat, and she said, “I don’t really want to talk about this.”

  “Fair enough.” His blue eyes had the gleam of a pearly marble she’d had as a child. Such clear eyes seemed as if they could see too much. “About dinner—how’s Friday evening work for you?”