The Garden of Happy Endings

by Barbara O'Neal

“Oh, yeah, you’re doing great,” Tamsin said sarcastically. “Hiding out in your hometown, playing wife to the priest—”

  “Stop!” Elsa yelled, slapping her.

  The car went deadly silent. Tamsin’s mouth dropped open and she raised a shaking hand to the red mark on her face. Alexa was as still as a statue. Elsa gaped, her fingertips stinging from the contact.

  Behind them, someone honked. The light was green.

  “I’m sorry,” Elsa said. She drove through the intersection, and on the other side parked at the curb. “I can’t believe I did that.”

  Tamsin grabbed Elsa’s hand and pressed it to her own face, on the other side. “I’m sorry, too. I should never have said that. I’m just in an evil, evil mood.”

  “You’re right, though. I mean, there’s a lot that rings true in that.”

  “Wow,” Alexa said from the backseat, and her voice was stronger than it had been since she arrived home. “I don’t even have to watch TV to get a Hallmark moment.”

  Both sisters laughed.

  “I think we need ice cream,” Tamsin said. “I’ll buy.” She reached into her pocket and fanned out three one-hundred-dollar bills. Wiggling her eyebrows, she said, “I found some money.”

  “They didn’t confiscate it?”

  “Nope.”

  “I want a banana split,” Alexa said from the backseat.

  Elsa glanced at her sister. “Let’s feed the girl.”

  They drove to Dairy Queen. Alexa ordered her banana split, and Tamsin got her favorite, an Oreo Blizzard. Elsa chose a hot fudge sundae. The clerk was annoyed over the hundred-dollar bill, but he broke it.

  They carried the sundaes to a table by the window and watched it rain.

  Tamsin said, “You should see how bad my garden looks. It’s totally overgrown and the peonies bloomed without anyone noticing.” Her voice broke. “How stupid, right? But it breaks my heart that no one saw them bloom, that they’re just invisible. They’re so beautiful!”

  “That is sad,” Alexa said. “I’m going to miss our bathtub for the rest of my life.”

  “It was a pretty good one.”

  “What happens next, sis?”

  “I have to go to court on Monday.”

  “Wow, that’s fast.”

  “It’s just an arraignment or something. To see if they’ll press charges or not. I’m worried it’ll be the same lady judge I got before. She didn’t like me one bit.”

  She slapped her hands over her face. “Argh! I can’t believe I even have conversations like this!”

  Elsa laughed.

  To her surprise, so did Alexa. “You’re such a bad girl. Maybe you should get a tattoo.”

  “Maybe I will. Maybe I’ll pierce my nose.”

  “No,” Alexa said firmly. “Tattoo yes, but I will not let you pierce your nose like some pathetic middle-aged divorcée.”

  Tamsin gave a belly laugh. “You mean like the pathetic can’t-get-divorced-because-her-husband-has-disappeared middle-aged mom I am?”

  “You are not like that.”

  Tamsin asked Elsa, “Would you ever get a tattoo?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe, under the right circumstances.”

  “What would you get?”

  She thought for a minute. “A shell. On my foot.”

  “For the camino?” Alexa asked.

  “Yes.” She swirled hot fudge around the ice cream. “It was very important.”

  “How about you, Mom?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve had kind of a boring life.” She laughed again. “Until lately, that is.”

  Elsa said, “How about you, Alexa? Would you ever get a tattoo?”

  She stared out the window. “Yes,” she said, and her brooding face came back.

  Tamsin said, “Do you notice anything different about me?” She tucked her hair, still messy, behind her ears and blinked in exaggerated innocence. In her ears were enormous diamond solitaires.

  “Whoa,” Alexa said.

  “The police didn’t notice?” Elsa asked.

  “They only put me in a holding cell. They didn’t take my stuff.”

  “Lucky.”

  “Shhh,” Tamsin said, and looked around the empty room. “The walls have, hmm, ears.” She laughed.

  “Where did you find them?” Elsa asked quietly.

  “In the secret drawer in the bread box.”

  Alexa laughed. “Get out! Perfect.” She high-fived her mother.

  “I have no idea how to exchange them, so to speak, but in the meantime, I have some money, baby.”

  “Good job,” Elsa said. “Even if it was crazy.”

  After they came back from Dairy Queen, the women scattered. Alexa retreated to her bedroom, leaving the windows open to the rain-cooled air. Tamsin got on the computer. Elsa and Charlie went out to the porch. She thought, briefly, about a cigarette, but it was too dangerous with both Alexa and Tamsin at home. The rain had stopped, but leaves still dripped, making a tapping noise. Crickets began to whir.

  Elsa curled up in a sweater and held her phone in her hand, thinking about calling Joaquin. Often, before she returned to Pueblo, Friday evenings were one of the times they would have long chats, after the evening Mass. They’d talk about their sermons and sticky issues that had come up, and problems they faced as shepherds of a congregation.

  But Tamsin’s words had struck a reverberating note. Maybe she was using Joaquin as a crutch to avoid facing her life. Maybe she was hiding out here, hoping the storm would blow over, rather than taking steps to figure out what her life should look like.

  Her phone rang in her hand. Joaquin’s name flashed over the screen.

  Of course. She answered. “Hey, is everything okay over there?” she asked, pulling the sweater sleeves down over her hands.

  “I think so. Should I be checking?” She’d experienced the warnings since childhood, so he understood.

  “Yes. There’s something amiss. I don’t know what it is. But it’s something.”

  “I’ll make the rounds after we talk.” He paused. “I just wanted you to know that I have a cat on my lap. I’m completely covered in white cat hair, which is going to give the Gloriosa sisters fits.”

  Elsa laughed. “I can imagine.”

  “He is a really nice guy, I gotta say. He purrs and he likes his belly to be rubbed.” He sounded slightly surprised and very pleased. “It’s kinda nice.”

  “Did you name him yet?”

  “Yep. He’s Santiago.”

  Elsa felt a whisper of stillness move through her. “Good name.”

  “So. Tell me about your meditation this morning, Elsa.”

  “Am I talking to Father Jack now?”

  “Is that who you need?”

  She swallowed a fierce, sudden rush of emotion. “Yes. I love my friend, but things are strange between us right now. I need a shepherd.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “I miss my work,” she said. “I don’t know who I am without it.”

  He made a soothing noise.

  “That seems like a sign I should go back.”

  “Are you avoiding the subject of the meditation, Reverend?”

  “No. I just don’t know what happened, exactly. I didn’t really intend to meditate. I sat down in the sunshine and just dove over to the other side. You know how that is, when you dissolve into … whatever it is. God. The universe. San Roque, maybe.”

  “So if there’s no God, where are you going when you meditate?”

  She sighed. “I don’t know what it is.”

  “But it’s something, right? A different place, a different state, a different something.”

  “Yes.” And she spoke her own truth. “It’s impossible for me not to do that, not to seek that communion. When I got the warnings tonight, I started to pray.”

  “You say that like it’s a bad thing.”

  She laughed softly. “I know.”

  “I think you’re asking a question we all ask at times, Elsa, and that’s ‘
Why?’ Why do terrible things happen? Why doesn’t God intervene?”

  “Yes. That’s it. And please don’t give me any platitudes. You know it’s a difficult question.”

  “It is. And I don’t know the answer. What I do know is that God is good. God is wise and He uses even evil to further His own ends.”

  The cold evil of Kiki’s body, lying exposed to the elements, flashed through her memory. How could any good come of that? Any good at all? She closed her eyes. “I have to figure this out.”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s driving me crazy to be so adrift. I have no anchor, no harbor. That was always my faith, and I don’t have it now.”

  “You’ve lost faith before.”

  Elsa wished for a cigarette. Took a deep breath of cool air instead. “Yes.”

  “How did you get it back those times?”

  She knew he didn’t expect a full answer. “I’ve been thinking about that.”

  “As Father Jack, I suggest that more prayer is a good step. If you don’t show up, how can there be any communication?”

  She thought of sitting with San Roque today, the peace that had overtaken her, the sense of the eternal rightness of things. “Maybe,” she said. He was quiet, which was one of the best things about him.

  She was quiet, too, and for a moment, she slid sideways again, into the silence between crickets, the space between the scent of earth and rain. She yanked herself back.

  Why? Why keep running? “Do me a favor, as my friend?”

  “Anything.”

  “Let me have some time in the courtyard in the mornings this week. When you go for your runs, leave the rectory through the front door.”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Thanks, Walking.”

  “You need to stop running from God, Elsa, and turn around and face him. There is nothing to be afraid of.”

  “Isn’t there?”

  “One thing I know to be absolutely true is that God is good. Whatever happens in the world that’s evil is the opposite of God.”

  “It’s lonely, without that connection.”

  “You know what to do.”

  “Yes.” She rubbed the dull worry at the base of her solar plexus. “Check the gardens, will you? Just take a look, and then text me.”

  “Will do.”

  She was brushing her teeth when the text came in:

  It’s 9 o’clock and all is well.

  Thx!

  As she climbed into bed, Charlie slumping down with a sigh at her feet, she felt the warning double, triple. There was nothing to be done but pray. Whether it was real or not, whether anything or anyone could hear, it was the only thing she knew to do. Mainly it was a prayer of protection, for all of her loved ones, for Tamsin and Alexa, who honestly seemed much better this afternoon. For Joaquin, engaged in his own struggles, for Deacon and the boys, for the garden and her congregation and whoever might need it.

  She prayed, even though prayers had not made any difference for Kiki. She prayed, even though God had taken her fiancé away and seemed disinclined to replace him, even after all these years. She prayed for her congregation, and something pinged, hard, in the middle of her chest.

  More of this.

  So she offered more prayers for them. Protection for whatever was coming.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  It was Joaquin who found Joseph.

  He had been running, going the reverse of his usual direction to give Elsa the privacy she had requested. The morning was cool after last night’s rains, and clouds still hung low over the trees, turning the river a dark silver.

  When he’d told Elsa the night before that she needed to stop running from God, the words seemed to lodge somewhere in his own chest. He was only a man, after all. Called to be a priest, but not called to be perfect. In the still morning, alone, he murmured aloud to God and San Roque and the angel who had never returned. He asked for forgiveness and guidance. He asked for help in mastering his hungers. And even in the asking, he felt a great weight fall away.

  He was not alone in this.

  As he ran along the levee, the church came into view, first the bell tower and the roof, surrounded by the graceful arms of elms, their leaves thick and green now, offering shade from the hard summer suns. Scores of birds twittered in them, blue jays and sparrows and robins; magpies with their magnificent long tails and patterned wings; the odd owl and bullying ravens. Their mingled calls seemed loud beneath the blankets of clouds.

  The building came into view, and then the wide expanse of the garden, the width of a full city block. At first, it only looked as if the rain the night before had knocked some branches out of the trees, for there was a lot of litter strewn across the paths. Then he realized that fences had been knocked down.

  Yanked down.

  He detoured, dashing sideways across the steep bank to investigate, and stopped dead.

  It looked like a herd of buffalo had torn through, trampling fences and the carefully tended plots. Plants were smashed, tossed into piles. A scatter of squash leaves and blossoms lay in a clump in the middle of the path, and much of the sturdy knee-high corn that had been looking so vigorous had been snapped at the base.

  Wanton destruction. Rage rose in him as he strode down the middle path.

  Here was Elsa’s warning. Almost all the fences had been torn down, almost every plot had some damage, but it was capricious, like a tornado. Some gardens had been trampled and yanked up badly. Others had only sustained wounds from the toppled fences. He started counting. Three very badly damaged plots. One of them was the church soup kitchen’s, which was better than if it had belonged to a family. He picked up a fence, shoved the support in the ground, tenderly knelt and propped up a listing tomato cage. Within, the tomato plant had a broken arm, but Joaquin pinched it off.

  A handful of others had taken a hit, with broken plants, footsteps in the middle. Toward the far end, the damage was very minimal, as if the vandals had been chased away.

  And that was where he found Joseph, lying facedown in one of the narrow alleys between two plots. A drum had been smashed near his head, and a gourd rattle lay near his knee, a hole stomped through it.

  Joaquin knelt urgently. “Joseph!” He touched the old man’s back, the frail bones beneath his cotton shirt. He was breathing. Joaquin pulled the long hair off the old man’s face, and saw that he’d been beaten. A cut with matted blood and dirt marred his left eyebrow and his eye was purple and swollen beneath it. As Joaquin murmured, the old man groaned.

  “Be still,” Joaquin said. “I’m going to get some help. Don’t move.”

  He ran toward the church, dashed into the courtyard, and halted, torn. Elsa was sitting on the bench, hands folded in her lap, her face utterly serene. A rosary made of green leaves was looped around her wrist.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, touching her shoulder. “I need you. Joseph has been beaten.”

  Her eyes popped open and she was on her feet. “Where is he?”

  “All the way at the other end of the garden. I’m going to call 911.”

  “I’ll go sit with him.”

  “Elsa,” he called, walking backward. “The gardens were trashed, too.”

  Something fierce crossed her face. “I’m going to sit with Joseph.”

  Elsa ran, barely taking in the damage all around her, at least not consciously. By the time she reached the old man, tears were already streaming down her face, and she didn’t bother to stop them. Kneeling at his side, she gently placed her hands on his shoulder. “Can you hear me, Joseph? Help is coming.”

  He tried to stir, and she said, “No, just be still. I’m so sorry you were hurt.”

  He reached for her hand. “You … got to … drum. Somebody.”

  “Shhh, Joseph,” she said, stroking his head. “You can tell me later.”

  “No.” His voice was raspy, and he struggled to sit up. Elsa heard an ambulance in the distance. “Spirits need our help. He … bad …” He coughed, and there was a
wet sound to it she did not like. “Bad evil. Bad spirit.”

  “We will drum. I promise. I’ll find somebody.”

  “Broke my drum.” He closed his eyes.

  The paramedics arrived with an electronic whoop and two big guys in dark blue uniforms carried a stretcher toward her. Joaquin directed. “This way!”

  Elsa stepped back to give them access, crossing her arms as they took the old man’s vital signs and called in statistics. Tears still poured from her eyes, unchecked, as if from some untapped well.

  People started to drift over from the apartments, the word spreading. Joseph was taken away, his daughter in the ambulance with him, her hair scattered down her back. Mario had been sent to Calvin’s apartment.

  The gardeners surveyed the damage, faces masked with rage and shock and sadness. “Who would do this?” one older woman asked, lifting a decapitated cabbage. Another tried to brace her torn fence, but it kept falling over again.

  Elsa pulled her phone from her pocket and called Deacon. He answered gruffly, and Elsa said without preamble, “We need you at the community garden. There’s been some vandalism.”

  He swore. “How bad?”

  She looked over her shoulder. Paris was running down the center path toward her plot, Calvin and Mario in tow. “Bad. They beat up old Joseph, too.”

  “Bastards.”

  “We need fencing and tools to start the repairs. Can you help with any of that?”

  “You bet. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

  “Thanks,” she said, and jogged up the side of the garden to reach Paris and the two boys, just as they arrived at their plot. All three of them stared at the torn-down fence with blank expressions.

  Calvin went immediately to his bean plant, which had been twining up a stake, and made a roaring noise. “They wrecked my beanstalk!” he cried, and his mother, who’d been looking at the destruction with a murderous expression on her face, wrapped her arm around him.

  “No, baby, look,” she said, kneeling. “The stake is gone, but we can tie the bean up again.”

  The plant was distressed, but didn’t appear to be broken. Elsa spied the stake and carried it over to him, her eye on Mario. He stood in the bright morning, wearing a dirty T-shirt, his hair loose down his back. His mouth trembled. Elsa went to him.