The Garden of Happy Endings

by Barbara O'Neal

  Tamsin scowled, sorely tempted to open just one of the emails to find out what was going on. All this time, she had assumed that Carlos had broken up with Alexa, not the other way around. But before she could follow through with her snooping, she clicked to sign out.

  What was the breakup about? Was Alexa ashamed? Was it about money?

  Maybe Tamsin should send Alexa back, to work things out or at least give it a try.

  A cold slap of reality doused that idea. A trip to Spain would cost more than a thousand dollars. Tamsin didn’t have two hundred, and even if she sold all the quilts she’d taken out of the house, she wouldn’t have very much. The best quilts, the ones she could sell for real money, were still locked up there.

  For a moment, she felt the unfairness of her situation again. After so many years of comfortable living, she had nothing now. Not even a thousand dollars for a plane ticket for her brokenhearted daughter.

  The burn rose and Tamsin slid her finger over the track pad to bring up the screen again. She signed on to her quilting boards, needing the distraction of her compatriots to blot out the heavy questions of the morning. The questions of what to do with her life and how to save her daughter were too big to answer just this moment.

  What could she do today? She could quilt. She could make something beautiful. She might not have much control over her life right now, but she could have control over those scraps of fabric. She could create order out of disorder.

  And then it hit her. The earrings Scott had given her. The giant diamonds she’d tucked into the secret stash in her bread box last fall and completely forgotten about.

  Holy cow. She laughed, and then clapped her hands over her mouth. Beautiful!

  She’d left that window open. She would sneak back in and get the earrings, and while she was at it, she’d steal the rest of her quilts, too. She would steal back her own property and then she would sell them on eBay.

  But the earrings. The earrings could make a big difference. Energized, she finished her breakfast, gulped down her coffee, and headed for the shower. She had to be at work soon, but she’d go by afterward.

  And tonight over dinner, she’d get to the bottom of what had happened between Carlos and Alexa.

  Which reminded her to leave a note for Elsa.

  Hey, sis, will you make sure Alexa gets up and takes a shower and goes for a walk today, please? Maybe set up a counseling schedule w/Fr Jack. See you after work.

  Xoxox, Tamsin.

  Humming quietly under her breath, she headed for the shower herself. It was only as she stuck her head under the spray that she realized that the tune was “I’m in the Money.” She laughed aloud. Oh, life could be so sweet!

  It was Friday morning, almost time for Elsa’s standing date with Joaquin. She was half-tempted to skip it, and the thought rolled around in her mind as she roused Alexa and made her take a shower, then sat with her while she ate some scrambled eggs. “You’re making me eat and you’re not having anything?” her niece asked.

  “I have plans for breakfast.” She sipped her coffee. “In fact, I want you to come over to the church in about two hours and find me in the rectory. We’ll do some gardening.”

  “I don’t feel like doing that.”

  “Well, I’m sorry. You have to come anyway.”

  “How will I get there?”

  “Walk.”

  “It’s miles!”

  “Maybe two miles, I guess. It will be good for you.”

  “No.” She shoved her plate away. A small pile of eggs remained on it. “I’m not walking.”

  Elsa pushed the plate back. The point was fresh air and exercise, which they would find in the garden. “Eat the rest of your eggs and I’ll leave you the keys to my car.”

  For a moment, Alexa scowled. Then she picked up her fork. “Fine.”

  Elsa stood and kissed her head. “My keys are on the hook over there. See you in two hours.”

  Alexa nodded.

  “Promise?”

  “Yes,” she said with exasperation. “I promise.”

  Elsa had not actually spoken with Joaquin after the odd moments on the levee yesterday. The conversation had been strange enough, but then Deacon had followed it with his weird … what? Accusation? Insight? Skewed loyalty?

  Whatever. She was irritated with men in general, and it was good for her to walk. She and Charlie wound through the sleepy, morning-lit streets. She could suddenly taste summer in the air. The trees were no longer clothed in the delicate pastels of spring, but had donned the vigorous palette of summer. Roses and peonies had replaced lilacs in the yards along her route. She passed a stout woman in a housedress, waving a hand sprinkler back and forth across the beds. “It’s gonna be a hot one today,” the woman called.

  “That’s what I hear.” It had been a long time since she’d spent summer in Pueblo, and she looked forward to it. The long evenings alive with crickets and the calls of children, the afternoons so hot and bright you found the coolest spot in the house and curled up for a nap.

  The door to the rectory was standing open, and Elsa called through the screen door, “Knock, knock.”

  “Come in,” Joaquin called.

  She pulled open the screen door, a sturdy wooden one, and let Charlie run in ahead, but he looked over his shoulder and whined. “Okay,” she said, “you go run in the field.” She unleashed him and he took off with a happy little yelp, as if he were off to meet a buddy. “Funny dog.”

  Joaquin stood at the sink, filling the coffeepot. He had not yet changed out of his running clothes. “Sorry,” he said, “I’m headed for the shower right now. Just fell a little behind this morning.”

  His shirt was an old turquoise running tank, so old the letters were worn off across the front. It showed the long length of his throat and his arms, the color of pecans. He must smell sweaty, but to Elsa he just smelled like Joaquin, heady and sharp and real. “Go,” she said, waving her hand in front of her nose as if he stunk. “I’ll take care of getting things started. What’s on the menu this morning?”

  He backed from the sink, not quite meeting her eyes. “Hadn’t really thought about it yet. What are you in the mood for?”

  “I don’t care. Did you run a long time? Maybe you want pancakes?” She poured water into the coffeemaker. “Are there some frozen berries?”

  “Yeah, okay, that sounds good.” He still had not met her eyes, and she was suddenly aware of a thick awkwardness between them.

  “Is everything okay?”

  His head came up. “What do you mean?”

  “I don’t know. You’re just acting kind of weird.”

  A flush of color touched his cheekbones—embarrassment or secrets or something—and she inclined her head. “Walking? What’s up?”

  But he just shook his head. “I’ll be back down in five minutes.”

  “Pancakes?” she called after him.

  His voice was muffled as he dashed up the stairs. “Fine.”

  So Elsa turned the radio on to the local pop station and started taking out the ingredients and utensils they would need—flour and eggs and milk and berries, the scarred electric griddle, pancake turner, and a glass bowl, blue with red and yellow stripes, that had probably been there since the second world war. As she turned the griddle on, a thought tickled her imagination, and as she stirred the ingredients together, she spun a scenario of what this place might have been like seventy years ago, when there had been two priests and sometimes a seminarian for the summer, and a flock of nuns who lived in the convent across the street who taught in the old school. Bustling, busy, vital.

  It still was. Sunlight splashed through the windows, and she could spy San Roque in the courtyard. Roses grew up a trellis behind him, sending their scent into the air, and a big white cat sat nearby, grooming himself in the sunshine. His fur was glossy and beautiful. On impulse, she went to the door. “Here, kitty kitty,” she called.

  He lifted his head, his pink tongue still sticking out the tiniest bit, whi
ch made her laugh, and put his paw down. She didn’t think this was the same cat she’d seen before. There was a gaggle of them, a pack of feral strays who lived on the smaller creatures who populated the riverbanks. “Come on,” she called. “Come here, kitty, kitty.”

  He thought about it, then decided she might be all right, and sauntered over, a big healthy male. Elsa stepped into the courtyard and he bumped against her leg with an arched back. She bent down to pet him, finding his fur thick and silky. “What’s your name, baby?” she cooed. “Do you want some breakfast?”

  He chirruped, his tail high, and she said, “Just a minute. Let me find you something.”

  She dashed into the kitchen, looked in the pantry and found a can of tuna, and opened it. The cat stood on the other side of the screen door, tail waving back and forth across the ground like a snake, but his posture was otherwise patient. “You’re so pretty,” she cooed, spooning half the can onto a plate. He bent over it with delicate intent.

  “Are you feeding that cat?” Joaquin asked from behind her. He’d tucked himself into his clerical clothes. His collar was tightly in place against his neck. Even his hair was slicked back from his face. “He’ll never quit now.”

  “Is he a stray? He seems well tended.”

  “I think somebody abandoned him.”

  She gave him a sideways smile. “Ah, so this is not the first time he’s been fed at this door.”

  “Maybe not.” He clapped her on the arm. “Come on, let’s get breakfast going. I have a busy day.”

  “Anything interesting?” She checked the heat of the griddle with a few drops of water. They danced across the surface, so she ladled out pancake batter.

  He poured coffee for both of them, splashed milk into hers and set it beside her. “Not really. Or not more or less interesting than most days. Just a lot going on. Wedding season is upon us.”

  “Ah.” She sipped her coffee, and spilled some onto one of the pancakes. “Dang it. I’m so clumsy this morning! I stubbed my toe stepping up to a curb.” She scraped up the bad pancake and stepped on the lever of the trash can to lift the lid. It was quite full. Right on top were the remains of a chicken breast and drumstick, along with a tangle of foil. “Chicken for dinner?” she asked, feeling airless.

  “Yes. Deacon brought it to me. Some woman made it for him, I think.”

  Still holding the spatula, she looked back at him. “Is that what he said?”

  Joaquin had been sorting through a stack of mail, and now raised his head to look at her. For a long, long moment they were silent, knowledge passing between them, back and forth, back and forth.

  At last, Joaquin said, “Not exactly. I made the assumption. Women are always bringing him things. Food, socks they’ve knitted.”

  Elsa carefully, precisely, flipped a pancake. “I see.”

  “Did you make it for him?”

  For the first time in their entire relationship, Elsa lied, too humiliated to say yes. “No. Who has time for that?”

  After breakfast, Elsa headed to the garden. Alexa would be there soon. They could do a little weeding, then she’d let the girl off the hook to go hibernate. Elsa didn’t know what she would do with herself, though. She felt restless—irritable, even.

  The cat had curled up beneath a rosebush at San Roque’s feet. She stopped to pet him, and he purred but didn’t open his eyes. A pink climbing rose curled around the saint’s pedestal. Absently, Elsa plucked one and laid it at his feet, thinking, A dog for Calvin, home for a stray cat.

  It was beginning to dawn on her that she didn’t have enough to do. For more than a decade, she’d been involved in a demanding career, part counselor, part teacher, part shepherd. The variety and constantly shifting roles of the job had appealed to her most of all. For a minute, she looked up at San Roque, his kind eyes. “You have any thoughts on this?”

  But he didn’t speak, not like Joaquin’s angel. “That’s another thing,” she said, pulling the leaves and flowers rosary out of her pocket as she sat down. “Joaquin gets an angel and I get nada? And you let Kiki be killed.” She rubbed the flat part of the leaf, feeling the tiny engravings of veins. “Not you, you, of course, but You. That You. I get that you need us to do your work, so why didn’t you just nudge me?”

  It was the first time she’d been able to articulate that thought. Elsa had been right there, not even a half mile from where Kiki was being tortured and raped. It haunted her. What had she been doing during the hours Kiki had prayed and cried and dreamed of rescue? Washing dishes, complaining that the pantry was a mess again, writing an email.

  She bent her head. Why not me?

  The sun was surprisingly hot against the top of her head. It made her think of Spain, of childhood sunburns, of sitting in a field somewhere with Joaquin when they were barely teenagers, trying to best each other with stories of wounds and illnesses.

  It made her sleepy, and she closed her eyes, letting the sunlight turn the back of her eyelids red.

  And just like that, she fell sideways into the vastness. The bigness. The everythingness of meditation. All boundaries dissolved entirely and she was no longer contained by human arms and legs, but could swim between the molecules of everything, outward into sunlight and the liquid scent of roses hanging in the air and thorns and cat and galaxy and back through her own body, into the deep red muscles of her heart, the blue rivers of her veins, and then again outward, to all things in all universes here and all through time, everywhere. It was the opposite of fear, the absence of loss, the soft wave of time and history and love and—

  She jerked herself back to real time. To the solid concrete bench beneath her, to the beads in her hand, so hot she yanked them off her wrist. Her cheeks were wet with tears.

  The cat had emerged from under the roses and he blinked a smile at her, his tail switching over the earth. If he were a cat in a fairy tale, he would be San Roque come to life, or a messenger of the saint. Instead, he was only a stray cat, healthy and very much a flesh and blood being.

  Who needed a home.

  In sudden decision, she scooped him up and carried him, unresisting and purring loudly, back into the rectory. Joaquin was in his office, guarded by Mrs. Timothy, but Elsa waved a hand. “This is important,” she said, and breezed by. The cat was so big he completely filled her arms, and his outstretched paws bounced.

  Joaquin was doing paperwork and he looked up in surprise.

  “San Roque is giving you a present. This is your cat.”

  “He’s white!” Joaquin protested, indicating his black shirt and pants. “He’ll shed all over me.”

  She nodded. “That’s why they invented lint rollers.” She put the cat down on the couch where parishioners often sat for counseling. He promptly lay down and curled his front paws under him, blinking up at Elsa. “You’re welcome,” she said.

  “What are you doing, Elsa? I’ve never had a cat.”

  “I don’t know,” she said honestly, looking at him. “We have to be the hands of God sometimes, don’t we? He needs a home and you need”—she broke off, then inclined her head and finished—“a companion.”

  Joaquin swiveled around, his big hands flat on his thighs. “Is that true?”

  The cat blinked.

  Elsa laughed. “His name should be Buddha.”

  Joaquin laughed, too. “Yeah. But we might have to come up with something else.” He looked at her. “Have you been in the courtyard all this time?”

  “All this five minutes, you mean?”

  “No,” he said with a quizzical smile and pointed at the clock. It had been nearly an hour since she’d left him.

  “Huh,” she said.

  “Were you—”

  She held up a hand, touched her index finger to her lips.

  He smiled.

  Alexa waited in the car, parked in the shade of an elm tree. She wore shorts and a T-shirt, her hair braided away from her face. “Where have you been? I’ve been waiting for you for an hour.”

  “Sorry.
I got distracted. Let’s go find Charlie and do some weeding.”

  “You just let him run? Aren’t you afraid he’ll get hit by a car?”

  “No. He stays in the garden. He likes to play with sticks and visit all the gardeners.”

  As they headed into the fields, Elsa again saw summer taking hold. Vines crawled up trellises and flowers bloomed in borders. The earth had sprouted hair from every pore—verdant and fertile and exuberant.

  A lot of gardeners were tending their plots, no doubt getting their chores done before the heat settled in. “Morning,” Elsa said to a middle-aged man wearing a hat to protect his face. He nodded in return.

  “What’s the old guy doing?”

  Elsa saw Joseph walking the perimeter with a rattle in his hand. The sound of his singing reached them easily in the still air, a low monotone in a language Elsa couldn’t identify. “He told me at lunch yesterday that the spirits have been warning him that bad things are coming. He’s singing to protect the land within from whatever it is.”

  Alexa made a little face, but said nothing.

  As they walked toward her and Tamsin’s plot, Elsa saw Deacon’s truck, but not the man himself. Charlie spied her and came dashing over, his muzzle dripping from a drink of water. “Come on, silly. Ew. Don’t get me all wet!” She opened the gate and waved Alexa into the garden.

  She entered, and stood there, hands akimbo. “What should I do?”

  Elsa gave her a pair of cotton gloves printed with rosebuds. “We need to weed.” She squatted and pointed out the crops. It was all growing vigorously, squashes spreading over the ground with their beautifully shaped hairy leaves, the corn shooting like rockets out of the earth. “We need to water, too,” she said, poking the soil. “It’s not getting quite enough for these hot days. Start with the weeds and I’ll go get the hose.”

  Alexa nodded, and squatted like a peasant, already pulling out the starts of sagebrush and goat heads. Noticing her niece’s pale pink skin, Elsa asked, “Did you put sunscreen on?”

  She gave her aunt a pained look. “Will you stop treating me like I’m six?”

  “Sorry.” She exited their plot and headed for the center pump, where hoses had been attached, long enough to reach most of the gardens.