The Garden of Happy Endings

by Barbara O'Neal

  He glanced at her, ever so slightly coy. “Really?”

  She let a smile edge onto her face. “Really. Because I love you, and you are important to me.”

  “Promise?”

  “Yes.” She drew an × across her heart. “Cross my heart and hope to die.”

  His grin was true this time, and she fell back against the chair, glad to have jollied him away from … whatever it was that kept cropping up between them lately. “You need to eat more, Joaquin,” she said firmly. “Or run less. Or both. I want you to gain ten pounds, sabe?”

  “Sí.” He flipped the pancakes. “I promise.”

  As he reached into the oven for the plates warming there, a wild blade of lightning blazed over the sky, and before it had even stopped, a violent crack of thunder blasted the air.

  Elsa jumped, giving an involuntary cry. Joaquin dropped the plates and they shattered on the linoleum floor. Charlie leapt up and barked frenetically, his whole body shivering.

  As if the lightning had broken the sky, rain came pouring out of it, unbelievably loud, pounding so hard on the roof and windows it seemed like everything would fall apart.

  “Wow!” Elsa cried, and fell to one knee to put her arms around Charlie. He wiggled and whimpered against her, inconsolable. To Joaquin, she called, “I need a blanket!”

  He nodded, dashed into the adjoining living room, and tossed her an afghan. She wrapped it around her shoulders and sat on the floor, pulling Charlie into a tent made of her body and the afghan. He crawled, close to the floor, into her lap, and tucked his nose under her arm. She pulled the blanket down around him, humming a lullaby and rocking slightly.

  Joaquin swept up the broken plates and threw them in the trash, then knelt beside Elsa. “What else can I do?” He put his hand on Charlie’s hindquarters.

  She shook her head. “Now we just wait it out.”

  “I’m going to take the pancakes off so they don’t burn.”

  Overhead, the rain poured and poured and poured. Elsa rocked gently back and forth, singing softly “Alleluia,” one of her favorite hymns. Joaquin turned off the stove and sat down beside them, joining in to sing the old words with her. His voice was deep and hers was an alto, and they had sung many many many songs together, but not for a long time.

  Maybe because she had spoken to Deacon about it or maybe because the smell of rain and earth triggered her visceral memory, she was transported to another day, a day on the Camino, the week before they arrived in Santiago. The day that changed everything.

  Everything.

  She and Joaquin were nearing the end of their pilgrimage on the Camino. It had been raining for a couple of days. While they were not exactly used to walking in the rain, because it was never pleasant, they were also resigned to it. They’d been on the road for nearly two months, and rain was part of the game. They wore their ponchos and kept moving, drying out their shoes as well as they could at night, putting on fresh socks as often as possible. Twice, they’d taken a break for a day to dry out a little.

  But at the end of the camino, with Santiago only six days away, they were exhausted in every possible expression of the word. In body, in mind, in spirit. It seemed to Elsa nearly impossible that they could keep walking for even two more days; conversely, impossible that they could ever not be walking. It was one of the reasons people undertook a pilgrimage—to reach that point of no return, to understand that life is only fleeting.

  On that day, the rain came down hard, sudden and blinding. Lightning finally drove them to take shelter in a grim concrete shed, a gray little nothing thing—until you went inside.

  A crude altar took up the entire back wall, and it was piled high with hundreds of offerings. There were pieces of paper with prayers written in a dozen languages, photos, and all kinds of other offerings—a barrette and a shoe, stones and feathers, even a branch from a tree, withered and old now. People had also written all over the walls and the altar itself.

  As she ducked into the space, Elsa was shivering from the rain, but she shivered even more in the cold room, hearing all those whispers and pleas, a sibilant chorus giving texture to the quiet. Joaquin came in behind her, shaking himself off. His hair was long then, pulled back into a ponytail, and he barely had any beard at all; only wisps grew along his chin.

  “This is amazing.”

  Elsa nodded, still shivering. She took a sip of water, and removed her poncho, shaking it out and then smoothing it on the ground so she could sit on it. She shrugged out of her backpack, which had been whittled down to practically nothing over the long miles. They had both begun with too much. Now they carried only the barest of necessities—three pairs of underwear and six pairs of socks, two sweaters, two T-shirts each, and the ponchos. One pair of shorts and one pair of long pants each. A hairbrush, two hats, lip balm, sunscreen, Band-Aids and moleskin and antiseptic and a small bottle of shampoo they alternated carrying. Joaquin carried a bar of soap and water bottles and any food they bought for the day—his shoulders were stronger, to start, and had grown powerful over the walk.

  She dug her second sweater out of the pack and pulled it on over the first, hugging herself to keep warm. Last night had not been a good sleep—there had been young pilgrims partying all over the town, and the noises had gone on into the wee hours of the night. Elsa was usually too tired to worry about interruptions, but she had her period and couldn’t sleep, tossing and turning and hurting. Maybe, she’d thought, they should take a rest day. But they were both anxious to get to Santiago, and a rest day would make it seven days instead of six, so they’d packed their gear, and Elsa had stocked up on supplies, making sure she had enough tampons to last between towns.

  The skies were gloomy when they’d set out with a breakfast of rolls and meat and hot chocolate in their bellies. Elsa had popped a bunch of aspirin and they’d started walking in the dark day, donning ponchos just in case.

  After a couple of hours, it started to rain. Harder and harder, until they were driven inside this cold shelter. Elsa huddled in her sweaters, leaning against the wall, her lower abdomen pulsing with low-grade pain. Joaquin moved around the room, looking carefully at everything, murmuring over one thing and another.

  It had all started as such a lark, but both of them had been changed by their pilgrimage. The knowledge settled between them, unspoken as of yet, a quiet void of conversation they jumped over and around and sat on top of.

  For Elsa, it was the people who had changed her, the pilgrims carrying their stories down the road to Santiago, the people manning the bars and restaurants and hostels along the way. She wanted to facilitate the journey of pilgrims, ordinary pilgrims in everyday life. Help the weary, comfort the bereaved, ease the furious.

  She could not do that in the Catholic Church, not in the way she envisioned, so she would have to explore other options. She didn’t relish telling Joaquin, who had been devout before they began their pilgrimage, and had grown more deeply so as they walked. His faith had always been one of the most appealing things about him. Now it glowed in him like a beacon, peaceful and encompassing. It drew people to him. As she watched him, sleepily, it seemed as if he was praying, his hand hovering over one of the lines written on the wall, and then another, sometimes adding his voice to the petitions that filled the room. Closing her eyes, she smiled softly, warming up now. A good man, her Joaquin. She dozed.

  When she awakened, the rain had stopped, and she had fallen sideways, her head resting on a backpack. Joaquin was kneeling in prayer, but he didn’t have his head bent. He was, instead, in an attitude of listening, his face turned upward to the altar. Blinking sleep away, Elsa thought she saw a woman sort of floating or sitting on the altar, a greenish light around her, and then she was gone.

  Another violent crack of lightning, then thunder, shook the rectory kitchen, bringing Elsa back to this time. This room, with Joaquin again.

  “Do you ever think of the camino?” she asked.

  “I have been lately.”

  “M
e, too.” Overhead came a much louder racket. Hail began to clack against the windows. “Oh, this is bad, Joaquin. It’s going to demolish the garden!” She wanted to jump up and look out, but Charlie quivered and whimpered under her arms. “What do we do?”

  “Let’s pray.”

  “Yeah,” she said, snapping. “That always seems to work.”

  To her surprise, he laughed. “Cranky, cranky.”

  “What is so funny?”

  “I don’t know,” he said, his shoulders still shaking. He bent his head, and laughter spilled out of him. “You. This. The dog. Prayers. All of it.”

  “Whatever. I’m not getting it, but you seem to be having a good time.”

  And he was. Still laughing, he fell sideways and then backward on the floor, his hands on his belly. He was laughing so hard that Charlie stuck his nose out of the afghan for a minute and stopped his quivering. Curious, he came out and licked Joaquin’s face, which only made him laugh harder. And even though Elsa could see no earthly reason for the hilarity, she found herself laughing a little herself, just because he was, like yawning when someone else yawns.

  Finally, he slowed and sat up, wiping tears off his face, then resting his long arms on his knees, hands dangling down. “Ah. Better now.”

  “What in the world set you off?”

  He waved a hand. “It wouldn’t make any sense to you.” For a moment, he faced her, calm and easy in a way he hadn’t been with her in a long time. Then he scooted forward, and with the dog between them, he took her hands. “Let’s pray. It can’t hurt, right?”

  She shook her head. And closed her eyes and let him pray for the protection and survival of the garden, for the health of the people, and for hope.

  “And finally, God, I ask a particular blessing on your daughter Elsa here, who has lost her way. Show her the path back to you so that she can continue her work.”

  Elsa raised her head and found him looking at her as himself, her friend Joaquin, instead of Jack the priest, and she accepted it in the spirit he offered it. “Amen,” she said.

  They sat on the floor, rubbing their hands over Charlie to keep him soothed. The hail slowed to a mild clatter, then stopped. The lightning ceased. Charlie fell on the floor and sighed, closing his eyes for a nap.

  “Let’s have breakfast and then we can go check the damage,” Joaquin said.

  Her stomach growled. “Good idea.” She peered out the window to see San Roque covered with a shawl of tiny hail. She sighed and turned back. “Maybe we’ll see an angel.”

  “You’ve never believed me.”

  “Yes I have, I do,” she said, sitting at the table, and speaking the truth. “I’m probably just jealous. Why did God give you an angel and a calling and I got—” She had been about to say a broken heart and a very bad year, but that wouldn’t be fair.

  “You got a ministry of your own,” he said, ignoring the unspoken. “And I’m sure, if you want to see an angel, you could ask for it.”

  She picked up her fork. “Or not.”

  He met her gaze and started to sing Joan Osborne’s “One of Us,” and said, “Because seeing would mean you would have to believe.”

  The rosary she carried in her pocket felt hot, and she only looked at him, wondering what it would take to believe completely, to be restored to the fullness of her faith, that deep and abiding love she had once felt.

  “What if the pope were a woman?” she asked quietly, and took a bite of the perfect pancakes. “What would be different?”

  Joaquin bent his head, his hands still beside his plate. Then he looked at her, and there was color burning over his cheekbones. “Everything,” he said.

  Because she had loved him in so many ways over the decades, she let it go and nudged his hand. “Eat, Skinny Man.”

  He picked up his fork.

  * * *

  Over breakfast, Joaquin had several phone calls from parishioners who were having problems as a result of the storm. The church secretary came in three times with pink slips filled with phone messages, and when two of the deacons arrived to examine the roof and church building for damage, he regretfully told her to check the gardens and get back to him.

  So she and Charlie went outside alone. She stopped at San Roque and scraped away some clusters of hail that had piled up around his sandals and on his dog’s snout, suddenly wondering what the dog’s name was. She realized she didn’t know.

  “Watch over the gardens, will you?” she said to the saint. “I know it’s not your realm, but we need help.” She zipped up her hoodie against the hail-chilled air, and wandered into the field, bracing herself for what she might find.

  They weren’t alone anymore, she and her dog. A number of residents from the apartments were working their plots, plucking out twigs that had blown down from the fragile elms lining the space, bending in to examine the damage. The young man with the rose tattoo sat on the picnic bench at the center, and waved to her with a sunny smile. She waved back and made a mental note to have a conversation with him sometime soon. He seemed lonely.

  Joseph, his black and silver hair falling loose down his back, used a hoe to gently scrape the rows between his plants. “Good morning!” he called, raising a gnarled hand in greeting. “Some storm, eh?”

  She paused, looking over the orange plastic fencing. “How are your seedlings?”

  “Oh, a little battered, but that’s just the way it is in springtime. Not all the little ones survive, huh?” He shrugged. “It’ll make the rest of them stronger.”

  “I guess that’s the way to look at it.” She lifted a hand and went to check her own plot. She and Tamsin had purchased some chicken-wire fencing and had nailed it to the supports, making it look more tidy and official. Deacon had made a gate for her out of old lumber and a screen of chicken wire, and hinged it to the post with a spring, so it snapped crisply back in place when it was opened.

  A lot of hailstones littered the garden, along with branches and twigs and a hundred billion elm seeds, which formed a pale green blanket over the ground. Elsa grunted in annoyance. No matter how many she swept up, thousands would sprout—sturdy, hopeful little trees ready to take over the world. Someone had told her once that elms were not native to Pueblo. Their branches were too fragile for the heavy snows that fell in spring and fall. And yet they had settled nicely into a landscape that needed big shade trees. There was one in the yard of the house in the Grove that spread its arms over the entire roof and backyard, a relief in July when the desert temperatures could hit a hundred or better.

  The largest hailstones were the size of marbles, and just as hard—translucent, tiny balls of ice—but most were much smaller. Gingerly, Elsa plucked the heaviest ones off the plants they were crushing, and brushed away the smaller ones. A swath of tomatoes had been wiped out, their delicate pale green necks broken, their bodies drowned in mud. The squashes that had looked so sturdy only hours before had been assaulted, their leaves shredded in places, a couple knocked over entirely. In a day or two, she would know which ones would make it, but in general, it didn’t look as bad as she’d feared.

  When she finished, she went to the children’s garden, making repairs to the vines, cleaning out the fallen twigs, and then moved on to the church kitchen plot, which had taken the least damage, for no reason Elsa could pinpoint. Those done, she walked up the aisles, looking to see if there were any other repairs she could make on behalf of gardeners who were at work or otherwise unavailable. Joseph was doing the same, she noticed, tucking into this garden or that, shaking a rattle, singing in a voice that reached some knot in the back of her neck and untangled it.

  Calvin’s mother knelt in her plot, her long hair looped back into a scrunchie at the base of her neck. “Hello, Paris,” Elsa said. “Did you get much damage?”

  “Not too bad,” she said, and sat back on her heels, resting her muddy gloves on her knees. “The corn took a hit, but it’s early enough that I can reseed. And Calvin’s beans are going strong, so that’s the importan
t thing.” She gestured to a vine climbing up a stout branch stuck in the ground.

  “Healthy!”

  “He thinks it’s going to grow up to heaven so he can ask Jesus for a dog.” She picked up her spade. “I don’t have the heart to tell him we couldn’t afford one if God Himself delivered it.”

  Elsa sensed that Paris wanted to talk. “He does want a dog,” she agreed. “Talks about it all the time.”

  “Don’t get me wrong, now. I like dogs just fine, but I can barely keep us fed, much less an animal. And they have to go to the vet and get shots and all that.” She poked the ground savagely. “It’d be good company for him, though. I know he’s lonely.”

  As if to illustrate the companionship possibilities of dogs, Charlie raced up from some errand and dropped a stick at Elsa’s feet. She chuckled and picked up the stick. “They are good company,” she said, throwing it as hard as she could. “But you’re right about the vet, too, and feeding him takes a lot.” Some prompt made her add, “A small dog doesn’t eat as much as Charlie, though.”

  “Oh, I don’t know if I care for small dogs. My neighbor’s got a Chihuahua and it’s the noisiest little thing, and he always seems so nervous.”

  “Well. Not all small dogs are Chihuahuas.”

  Paris nodded politely.

  “Where’s your family?”

  “Kentucky.” Another poke at the earth. “Bunch of loud rednecks.”

  “All of them?”

  She inclined her head in assent, as if Elsa could not know how deep that redneckedness could go. “I’m not stupid. I’d go home, where it would be easier, but they’d never accept my baby.”

  “Their loss.”

  The girl’s face blazed as she met Elsa’s eyes fully for the first time. “He’s a good boy.”

  “He is,” Elsa said. “Very charming, and very, very smart. He can be anything.” Elsa smiled. “Anytime you need help with him, you can call me. We have a really good time together, and Charlie loves him.”

  “That’s real nice of you. You’re the minister, right? Father Jack’s friend?”