The Garden of Happy Endings

by Barbara O'Neal

  But every so often, there was this reality, too.

  Eating alone, a little too late, in the rectory kitchen on a Thursday night. The overhead fixture cast a greenish light over the old linoleum, and the fluorescent buzzed faintly, all the time. He had been on his feet nearly all day, taking sacraments to one of his deacons, attending a business meeting at the cathedral, participating in a committee meeting about the beautification of the grounds. He had avoided the soup kitchen, embarrassed at his impassioned confession to Elsa.

  His body was tired when he took the foil-wrapped packet of fried chicken Deacon had given him this afternoon and a grapefruit soda from the fridge and carried both to the table. Inside the foil were a hearty-sized breast and a thigh. Beautiful. He was very hungry.

  It was perfect chicken. The skin crispy, not greasy, the meat perfectly tender. His stomach growled, like an animal grabbing a prize. Aside from the faint buzz of the overhead light, his world was utterly silent—the rooms above and around him, the church and its warren of rooms and basement and offices. All empty. Quiet.

  Save for Joaquin, sitting alone eating perfectly fried chicken some woman had made for Deacon, angling to capture his heart. Women cooked for Joaquin, too, lots of women, and he knew their hearts were not always completely innocent. The stories he could tell of women trying to seduce him were legion, but a priest did not tell. And he was immune to their coaxing. They were lonely or ignored or unhappy in their lives. He stood in front of them week after week, offering the face of God, the hands of God, and they spun their fantasies around him. It was how things were.

  He peeled away a perfectly crisp layer of skin and put it in his mouth, tasting salt and a spice he could not name. He sucked the flavor from his fingers and lifted the moist flesh to his mouth and sucked the juices there, closing his eyes, thinking of Elsa’s smooth olive throat, her breasts, her tiny, tiny waist. The only woman in his life. The only one he had ever wanted.

  The second time he’d seen the angel, Joaquin had been exhausted from walking the Camino. Weeks and weeks and weeks they’d walked, in the rain and the blistering sun. He had not taken it seriously, but he should have. Before they left, he had dreamed he was swallowed whole by a monstrous bird with fierce bright wings.

  The angel came to him in the same green light and gown she’d worn before. This time, he was not sick. He was not feverish. He was not afraid. He was only cold and tired, and ready to be finished with this crazy undertaking that he’d done largely for Elsa’s sake. They would go home and be married.

  He’d been uncomfortable and restless for days, haunted by dreams full of whispers, and a sense of impending doom. Each time they passed a church, he had ducked within and dropped a coin into the bucket to pay to light a candle. Keep us safe, he’d prayed. Keep us safe.

  Twice, they had been trailed by a black dog, a big shepherd mix of the type that was so common on the road, and Joaquin had wanted to run away from it. Elsa left it food.

  They had taken shelter in the concrete hut, alone, which was a miracle in itself, so close to the finishing mark. The rain poured down with rare intensity, driving everyone off the Camino, into friendly bars or hostels. Elsa curled up into a ball and went to sleep. Joaquin watched over her, and he moved along the walls, reading the petitions and prayers and graffiti. It was always so touching to think of what they carried, the pilgrims who’d walked this road—the offerings they had made so that God would take away their pain or cure a child or bring back a lost wife. He found himself touching the words, praying on behalf of the writers, one and another and another, whispering with them, however long it had been. After a time, he fell into a meditative state, apart from the rain and his body. His nose was cold and his arm began to ache, but he kept touching the petitions.

  He saw the light first, that spill of palest green, which he had come to believe over the years was just something his childish brain had filled in for him. It softly glowed in a corner of the room. Joaquin turned, feeling both dread and piercing excitement. There was the angel, so startlingly familiar and beautiful, wearing a green gown. Her eyes were clear and large and very dark. “It’s time, Joaquin,” she said.

  He frowned at her, the fingertips of his right hand still touching the wall. He shook his head, denying her or the moment or what she was about to ask.

  “You will be a priest. When you leave Santiago, you will leave your old life behind.”

  Again he shook his head, gesturing toward Elsa. “I’m to be married.”

  She gazed at him steadily and in her eyes he saw what eternity might look like, vast and beautiful.

  A third time, like Peter, he shook his head in denial. But his eyes filled with tears as he knelt on the cold hard floor and felt the angel surround him, filling him with light.

  All these years later, alone in the rectory kitchen, he knew he could not have denied her. It was the greatest joy and the greatest sacrifice of his life.

  Deacon had the option of choosing one of the women who brought him plates of food. A woman to be his partner and listen to his problems and random observations. He would lie with her at night, and when he awakened in the darkness, she would be there, and he could put an arm around her and hold her close.

  Grief rose in Joaquin. This was the suffering that was his to bear, the loss of this simple, ordinary thing—a wife to keep him company and bear witness to his life. He longed for it, longed for Elsa. To make love, yes, of course. It was a simple, cornerstone pleasure in life, and they had been well matched. But more, he longed for her face at breakfast, for her comfort in the middle of the night, for her hand on his head when he was overcome with human suffering.

  The loss of it welled in him, filled him like a dark smoke, and he bent his head to his arms. Would it really have made him a lesser priest if he had married? What would have been lost if he had children to fill the rectory? To bring him his slippers when he was tired, as he had brought his own father’s?

  He wept, ashamed of his weakness and longing, but so filled with it that he could not help it. What would it have cost you, he asked the silent heavens, to let us have wives?

  He fell asleep just like that, his head on his arms, chicken bones spread around him.

  Deacon, too, had chicken for supper. It was dark by the time he made it home, and he was dead tired. He was getting too old to dig in the dirt and haul 4 × 4’s and manhandle bags of peat. He’d be fifty in three years, and he felt it in every bone and muscle in his aching back.

  He tended the dogs, filling the water dishes and food bowls, giving each dog a good dose of loving. He’d diapered Sasha before he left, and now he took it off and shooed her outside. The others, smelling chicken, had no intention of leaving him. Joe made his laborious way to the table and plunked down, waiting with sad eyes for Deacon to join him. Mikey, the Shih Tzu, skittered forward and back, eagerly looking up at Deacon for the possibility of a treat, until Deacon finally got fed up with it and barked out, “Go lie down.”

  The chicken was perfectly golden brown, the batter speckled with pepper and something reddish. Each piece was just right, the crust not too thick or too thin or falling off. He debated heating it in the microwave, but feared the breading would go soft.

  Still, he wanted hot food, not cold. He’d give it a try with a lesser piece, see how it worked. Choosing a thigh, fat and battered, he wrapped it in waxed paper and heated it in the microwave for a minute, then let it sit in its own grease for another minute while he opened a can of beans and put them in a pot to heat.

  When he unwrapped the chicken, it steamed. When he bit into it, the skin was crisp, but hot juices burst out and spilled down his chin, salty and delicious. He closed his eyes, chewing. Perfect.

  Elsa came into his mind. Elsa, Elsa, Elsa. He’d thought of little else for days. Weeks, really, since that first day when they’d planted the garden. He’d seen her slip away, weeping over the blessing, and then come back with her little fierce face, determined to be present, even if it was hard.
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  Grit. He liked that about her. In fact, he had yet to find anything about her he didn’t like. She was good with the kids, and a no-nonsense organizer who pulled off the feat of the soup kitchen every week as if it were coffee for her sister. Her newest venture was to organize Saturday night potlucks in the garden, giving the gardeners a chance to share recipes, trade secrets, and generally cement the place as a community center. Smart.

  He wrapped the rest of the chicken pieces individually and put them on the plate to heat in the microwave, then returned his attention to the thigh in his hand. Thighs, breasts. He liked those things about Elsa, too, physical things. Her hair, especially, caught him every time, those dark glossy spirals. It was such healthy hair, the evidence of good living. He wanted to undress her, taste her, shake that composed exterior into a frenzy of—

  The trouble was Father Jack. Who loved her even if he never said so. Deacon owed him. A lot. A good man didn’t steal a woman his friend loved.

  But if that friend was a priest? Didn’t that change things?

  He wiped his fingers and put the chicken bones in a bag in the sink—if he didn’t get them outside, one of the dogs would find them and choke to death. The microwave dinged. He dished up the beans, and took them to the table, where he turned on his iPod, connected to a small dock. The music looped out, quiet blues tunes, and it eased the tenseness in his neck.

  He had met Father Jack when he was in prison in Cañon City, so full of anger and shame he was like a whirling tornado. He’d been chosen to participate in a program for recovering alcoholics to take some training in anger management and prayer, and despite his upbringing, he’d gone for it. Father Jack and a Protestant minister of some kind led the sessions once every other week.

  Deacon liked Jack immediately—his earthy sense of humor, his realness. He seemed less a priest than a man who had happened to run into God somewhere at a watering hole and had become good friends with him.

  Even now, Deacon envied him that relationship. He sometimes thought he might have a glimmering of the Divine, and he sure had long talks with his Higher Power, because a drunk like himself wouldn’t stay sober long without them.

  But he didn’t know God like Jack did.

  Or Joaquin, as Elsa called him.

  He rubbed his face and tried to shake it off. Elsa, Jack, Joaquin, God, angels, the garden, all of it. The chicken waited, hot and salty and juicy, and Deacon began to eat. Slowly. Savoring it. Hot juices, tender flesh. He thought of Elsa’s mouth, plump and succulent and eager, thought of her hands on his lower back this morning, moving in little circles, and the press of her pelvis against his.

  He closed his eyes, half-dizzy, and took a breath. His libido gave him a vision of her naked on his bed, that black hair scattered over his white pillowcases. He would begin at her forehead and kiss every inch of her body. He would not let her move until he had done that, covered her with his mouth and tongue. And then—

  A scratching at the back door startled him out of the fantasy, and he stood up, adjusting himself like a teenager. He let the dog in, and his craving moved with him, on the back of his neck and the small of his back, in his belly and his knees and his mouth.

  She deserved to be more than the surrogate wife of a celibate priest.

  But what did Jack deserve?

  And Deacon supposed that he, as a man who’d already lost a perfectly decent family, and the killer of a mother, didn’t technically deserve anything at all.

  A strange, ancient desire rose in him then, a remembrance of whiskey, the way it blotted out dilemmas like this one. He could taste it on the back of his throat, the fire and relief, the letting go.

  Dangerous, that. Maybe it was a sign that he wasn’t ready for anything as intense as this might be. Wiser to stay away, keep her at arm’s length.

  If he could.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  In the dead of night, Alexa snuck into the living room to check her email on Elsa’s laptop computer. She used a web-based service and logged on, finding a long line of messages from the same address. Clenching her teeth, she highlighted the whole list and put her finger on the delete key.

  At the last minute, she couldn’t resist just the smallest glimpse of him, the small pleasure of hearing his voice through his written words. Bracing herself, she opened the first.

  Azul, Azul, Azul! Where have you gone? I am bereft. Your ring is on a chain around my neck, close to my heart. I will wear it until you return.

  It was like shards of glass slamming into her heart. She thought of his chest, covered with silky black hair, thought of her beautiful ring lying against his heart. She punched the button to read the next one.

  Where have you gone? Every day I wake up thinking that today is the day you will call me. Or knock on my door. I know there must be some explanation for this terrible disappearance, but I cannot think why you could not talk with me about it. Cara, cara, cara, please. I am bereft without you.

  Tears began to leak from her eyes, blurring the screen. She should not have started reading them. She could hear his voice clearly, feel his touch. But now she couldn’t stop.

  Cara, Azul, I cannot eat, I cannot sleep. I pace all day, going to the roof to see if I might catch sight of you coming closer. Where are you? Why will you not respond? My heart is bleeding.

  And another.

  The world is bled dry of color without your eyes. There is no music I can bear without your laughter. I can barely breathe the air if it does not have your perfume in it.

  Where are you? Why have you run away?

  And the last one:

  I am losing faith, my dearest love. I fear you will never return, and I will die if that is so. You think I jest, but this is true and real, this love between us. I will die without you. My life is draining through my fingers, into the earth. Without you, I am nothing.

  Alexa crumpled into a fetal ball, covering her ears with her hands to banish his voice. She was dying, too, she could feel it. Without him, there was no reason to live.

  Tamsin found her daughter asleep on the living room floor, her magnificent hair spread around her. For a moment, she looked dead, and Tamsin pressed her hands over her heart, feeling like Lady Capulet. Then she saw Alexa breathe, and realized that she was only asleep.

  The girl looked so wretchedly miserable. Her cheekbones stood out like hawk wings, her skin was as pale as chalk. Tamsin sank down beside her, touched her hair, brushed it away from her face. “Wake up, sweetie. You’re going to get a crick in your neck.”

  Alexa stirred, rolling over to rest her head in Tamsin’s lap. “Why did he do this?”

  “Carlos?”

  “No, Dad. How could he be so cruel to us when we were supposedly the center of his world? How could he do something so terrible?”

  Tamsin drew her fingers through her daughter’s hair, thinking of the pat answers, that Scott had a disease, a gambling disease, and he couldn’t help it. But Tamsin didn’t feel the truth of that herself, and her daughter needed more. Deserved more. “Sometimes people take a wrong turn, baby. A really, really bad turn. He loves you. I know that. I know he would have tried to spare you.” Against her body, Alexa tensed a little, or maybe only came to attention. “I think it must have just gotten out of control and he didn’t know how to get off the merry-go-round.”

  Alexa pushed herself to a sitting position. “You shouldn’t let yourself get into a position like that in the first place. He can’t be the person I thought he was.”

  “No,” Tamsin agreed. “Probably not.”

  Alexa hung her head. “What am I going to do?”

  “The next thing. And the one after that.” Tamsin thought about reaching for her daughter again, but she kept her hands in her lap. “Today, you need to take a shower. And get dressed, and take a walk.”

  “And go where? Do what?”

  “I don’t know. That’s up to you. What you have to stop doing is only sleeping and crying. Now you have to get up and get dressed.”

/>   “Whatever.” She pulled herself upright, a collection of bones. Tamsin half expected to hear skeletal clattering as she walked to the back room. “You don’t understand.”

  “Elsa does,” Tamsin said. “And so will Father Jack. Go talk to him.”

  “What does a priest know about a broken heart?”

  “He wasn’t born a priest, you know. He’s still a man. He can help you. He helped me.”

  “I don’t want to talk to anybody.” She slipped into the other room.

  Tamsin made herself a pot of coffee and some oatmeal and toast, trying to be quiet. Instead of getting dressed, Alexa had gone back to sleep, snoring quietly through her congested nose, and since Elsa still had nightmares, Tamsin hated to wake her when she was sleeping in apparent peace.

  She carried her breakfast into the dining area of her childhood home, feeling oddly content. Safe, in this little pocket of time when crisis had thrown her together with her sister and her daughter, the two people in the world she genuinely loved. Calamity had brought her a measure of company, revealing just how lonely she’d been before.

  But this time would not last. Alexa would heal. Elsa would find out if she still believed in God, and would return to her church or find something else to do. What would Tamsin do? Work in the fabric section of Walmart forever, living in her childhood home until she became an old woman?

  Maybe she needed to start thinking about her own future. How to live, what to do, what kind of work she might want to pursue.

  She took a bite of toast and oatmeal together, and slid her finger over the center of the tracking square on the laptop. Alexa’s email account was on the screen, showing a list of emails from the same person, Carlos Galíndez. Please! one subject line said. I love you, please call me, said another.