The Ladies of Garrison Gardens

by Louise Shaffer

  “Yeah. I just wanted to . . . you know . . . say thank you and now—you're busy.”

  He looked around the empty waiting room. “Not really.”

  “You will be. And I am. Busy.”

  “Oh, I thought maybe you'd come over here to say you've seen the way of the truth and the light.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “About what I said last night. I figured it would take about twelve hours to sink in, and here you are—”

  “No.”

  “No, you don't see it my way, or no, it hasn't had a chance to sink in yet?”

  “You're Denny's little brother.”

  “I know.”

  “I babysat you. I changed your diapers.”

  “Not lately.”

  “I used to beat you up.”

  “I forgive you. I know it's going to take awhile for you to get past the age thing. And the fact that I'm Denny's brother.”

  “Denny's baby brother. Listen, Wiener—”

  “Could you not call me that?”

  “This is sweet. And I'll admit it's flattering—”

  “You're just scared.”

  “What? You think I'm scared of you?”

  “Of what people will say.”

  “I've never been scared of that in my life!”

  “That's my girl.”

  “I am not your girl!”

  “Yet.”

  “Listen, you little—”

  “You really should stop calling me little. I have about five inches on you.”

  “Will you shut up and let me talk?”

  “Okay.”

  “We're going to pretend we never had this conversation.”

  “Like we did last night?”

  “You're impossible.” She started for the door.

  “Go out with me, Laurel Selene. I promise you'll be able to handle it. We start slow, maybe grab a little supper.”

  She walked out the door without answering and heard him open it again as she strode to her car, where she lowered herself into the front seat with dignity and—thanks to the hiked-up skirt—a display of what she knew were the best legs in the county.

  “I'll call you about that date,” he yelled, as she roared off.

  She hadn't gotten her message through to him. He still didn't understand that they couldn't be anything but friends and that that was a good thing.

  Men, and getting involved with them, were bad topics for Laurel. Not that The Wiener fell into the category of men in the getting-involved-with sense. That was ridiculous. But given her history with members of the opposite sex, when she fell for a man, it was never a positive experience. As Denny had once put it, “Honey, if you like him, I don't want to meet him alone in a dark alley.” That hadn't been altogether fair. None of her previous love interests had been dangerous; her taste ran more to cheaters and users. But since she'd started hanging out on Li'l Bit's porch she'd been avoiding the kind of one-night stands that had made up so much of her social life. It could have been the influence of the three Miss Margarets, or the fact that Peggy's illness had taken over her life. Or it could have had something to do with Josh, her last—or perhaps her first—semi-serious attachment.

  Josh was a magazine writer, in his late forties, who had come down from New York to do research on a book he was writing. At first he'd run true to form, pumping Laurel for information about her father because the scandal surrounding John Merrick's death had been part of his story. But that had changed. He was the only man besides Denny who'd ever recognized, or cared, that she had a brain in her head. He even offered to stake her to a new start in New York City. She'd turned him down. While she'd never regretted it, there had been a night after Denny announced his engagement when she'd almost used the private cell phone number Josh had given her in case she changed her mind.

  Three days later she'd read in People magazine that Josh and the fourth Mrs. Josh—an actress half his age—were on their honeymoon. The bride, who was noted for playing roles in unpleasant independent films, looked intense and a tad anorexic in the pictures. Josh beamed at her with the kind of total appreciation Laurel remembered well. And she finally admitted she missed it. Because even if he did look a little silly next to his young bride, Josh had been the pick of the litter in Laurel's romantic life.

  And now there was The Wiener and his childhood crush. Which he would get over. This time next year he'd have some totally appropriate young woman on his arm, and he'd be wondering what had possessed him to ask Laurel for a date. She shifted gears and let the Viper fly down a deserted stretch of road, wishing she felt more cheerful.

  Chapter Sixteen

  ONE THING WAS CLEAR to Laurel: She had to start dealing with her holdings. It wasn't going to be easy. The fact that Garrison Cottage was stuffed with Miss Myrtis's antiques was enough to make her want to burn the place, and not just for Peggy's sake. The myth of Miss Myrtis as a great lady had always made Laurel want to gag, but now she knew about the power of attorney Miss Myrtis had signed. Unlike Peggy, who had been young and penniless when she married Old Mr. Dalt, the great Miss Myrtis had been an heiress with her own fortune, an education, and some major family clout behind her. But she'd signed over her power of attorney like a good little lapdog instead of stopping her husband and his henchmen as they set up policies that were still keeping wages in Lawson County the lowest in the state. Low wages meant low taxes, which meant lousy schools, which meant uneducated kids who had nowhere to go for jobs except back to the Garrisons. And Myrtis Garrison could have stopped it all years ago! Instead, she'd given handouts to people who could have helped themselves if they'd had a level playing field and she'd picked up a reputation for saintliness. Laurel hated the way everyone bought the hype about the old bat who had once been named the First Lady of Garrison Gardens by the society writers of her day.

  Now Laurel was the new lady of Garrison Gardens, not to mention Garrison Cottage—which she had to finish looking over. It would be easier to do that than sitting at home and staring at the power of attorney Stuart Junior wanted her to sign. At least she could put off becoming a lapdog for a little longer. She left Maggie's clinic, drove to the big log house, went upstairs, and picked up her tour where she'd stopped it, in the master bedroom.

  The room was surprisingly girly, with pink dominating the carpets and draperies. The wallpaper was badly faded, but Laurel could see that the roses in the pattern were pink too. The hateful canopy bed and a chaise with a Tiffany lamp next to it were the only freestanding pieces of furniture in the room. There were no bureaus or dressers, but two of the walls were lined halfway up with built-in drawers and shelves painted a creamy white. There were large closets on both sides of the room. In one corner, a small makeup table had been built in with a mirror and itty-bitty lamps alongside it. There certainly wasn't enough light or counter space for a woman who loved fooling with cosmetics as much as Peggy had. But then, this room hadn't been Peggy's. The inadequate makeup area made a right angle with a padded window seat that ran the entire length of the back wall under the windows. It was covered with pink silk too. Pink had never been Peggy's color.

  The bed was still made up, as if waiting for Peggy and Dalton to turn in. Or Dalton and Myrtis. The pillowcases were monogrammed with the swirly Benedict B. Laurel turned her attention to the drawers instead.

  The right side of the room must have been Dalton's. There were drawers full of men's socks that had been folded into neat little bundles and laid out in straight rows. Other drawers held stacks of men's underwear, also neatly folded. In his closet, several pairs of identical brown-and-white ventilated wing tips were impaled on racks that climbed up one wall, and at least a dozen identical lightweight summer suits hung on nice-smelling wooden hangers, along with pants, jackets, shirts, and sweaters. Old Mr. Dalt had been a natty but not very adventurous dresser.

  Peggy's side of the room was empty. This made sense, since Peggy had moved herself to the little bedroom downstairs after Dalt's death. But to Laurel it felt l
ike a sad summary of Peggy's life in the house. She wanted to lock the bedroom door and walk away, leaving it the way it was. But this house was already too full of memorials to the dead. She found some black plastic garbage bags in the kitchen, brought them back to the bedroom, and began filling them with the clothes that had belonged to Peggy's husband.

  It was late in the afternoon by the time she was done. In spite of the air-conditioning she'd turned on, she was sweaty, tired, and covered with about three decades of undisturbed dust. It was time to quit. Tomorrow she'd call the ever-helpful resort staff and request that someone haul the bags down to the rescue mission. But before she left, she looked around the room one last time, to make sure she'd gotten everything. That was when she noticed that part of the window seat's top was actually a lid, evidently opening to a storage compartment. Curiosity trumped weariness, and she lifted it up. The area was much larger than she expected. Its farthest corners were dark, and the wood was raw and unpainted. At first she thought the entire space was empty, but as she was about to close the top, she saw a glint of something that looked like gold in the corner. Hoping the tetanus shot she'd gotten in grammar school was still active, she reached in, dodging rusty nails, and found the handle of an old-fashioned suitcase. It was good sized, made of leather that had once been beautiful and very expensive, with a handsome brass latch. Laurel brushed off cobwebs and a layer of grit. The leather was cracked and water stained, and it smelled moldy. Obviously it had been in the window seat for some time. But why had Peggy put it there? Laurel turned it over and found the swirling B for Benedict on the front. The suitcase hadn't belonged to Peggy. Like everything else in the house, it had been the property of Miss Myrtis. Who, for some reason, had wanted to hide it.

  It took Laurel forty minutes and a trip to the gardener's shed for a toolbox before she finally managed to pop the rusty lock on the suitcase. Inside, she found an old-fashioned pinafore and dress. Laurel pulled them out gingerly. The pinafore was a lacy ruffled affair that had once been white but now had yellow fold lines. Threaded through the lace ruffles was a faded pink ribbon, and there was a pink sash with a big squashed pink silk rose on it. The dress, which was also liberally supplied with white lace ruffles, had probably been bright green at one time, with more roses printed on it. Both the dress and the pinafore looked like something out of a picture book of Victorian children. The getup wasn't garish, but the girl who'd worn it would have stood out in a crowd. She must have been over five feet tall and hard on her clothes. The apron had been torn and mended several times, as had the dress. The seams of the dress had been let out, and there were inserts of pink fabric on the sides—obviously, its owner had worn it long past childhood.

  Laurel looked back in the suitcase to see if there was anything else. On the bottom of the case was a yellowed paper. She pulled it out carefully and found herself staring at a page of sheet music for a song by Stephen Foster called “Beautiful Dreamer.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  MRS. RAIN

  2004

  THE HOUSE WAS DARK and she was supposed to be asleep. But her legs ached. More important, so did her heart. Not the pumping muscle her young doctor was so diligently preserving, but her real heart, that non-organ that was somewhere deep inside. Her heart was where the music had come from, the singing and the laughing, and it was where the memories were kept—memories that were triggered easily because they were so much more real than anything that was going on in her life today. The death of Peggy Garrison had started a flood of them.

  Clearly, sleep was out of the question. She got herself out of bed and went into her closet. It was big—in her time she'd slept in rooms that were smaller—and there were two shelves above the clothes racks, far too high up for her to reach. She fought her way through the robes and nightgowns that seemed to make up too much of her wardrobe these days, until she found a stepladder folded up in a corner. She opened it and carefully climbed up—her boy doctor would have a fit—feeling around on the top shelf through a mess of scarves, gloves, sweaters, bits of string, old newspapers, and other debris she refused to let Essie touch until she found a large gray envelope hidden behind some shoe boxes. Clutching her prize, she climbed back down and settled herself in the large wing chair where she sat to watch television. She turned on the lamp, opened the envelope, and pulled out an ancient sepia-toned photograph of a young girl wearing a long old-fashioned dress with roses printed on it and a white pinafore with ruffles, a wide sash, and a big artificial rose. If the picture had been in color, the roses and the sash would have been pink.

  She slid the picture back in the envelope and made her way downstairs to the living room where the piano was. She'd never actually learned to play the thing, not more than just fooling around and picking out a melody with one finger, but she'd always liked having it in her house.

  She put the envelope in the piano bench, sat down to play, and she caught sight of her hands resting on the keyboard. When you were young you never believed that the day would come when your fingers would be twisted and your pretty voice would become a croak, something you couldn't bear to hear. Still, you had to do the best you could. Slowly she began to tap the notes with one finger while, in a soft voice, she sang the lyrics she knew by heart:

  “Beautiful dreamer, wake unto me,

  Starlight and dewdrops are waiting for thee.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  IVA CLAIRE

  1927

  BEAUTIFUL DREAMER, wake unto me,” Iva Claire sang, as she walked slowly across the stage of the New Court Theater. She sang loudly into the empty house, checking for dead spots, those places onstage that seemed to swallow up the sound of your voice so it never reached the audience. A civilian wouldn't know what to look for, but at twelve Iva Claire was a seasoned professional who could tell when her voice had stopped carrying. Whenever she and Mama played a town for the first time, she always went to the theater before rehearsal to run through their numbers so she could warn Mama about any problems. Mama never thought of things like that.

  Iva Claire and her mother were vaudevillians. Their last name was Rain—Mama's full name was Lily Rain—so their act was called Rain and Rain: The Sunshine Sisters. Mama called it their nom de théâtre. Being in show business was Mama's dream. Getting out of show business was Iva Claire's dream.

  “Starlight and dewdrops are waiting for thee,” Iva Claire sang, as she finished working her way across the stage. There were no dead spots in the New Court; it had been well built seventy years ago. Now it was old and dirty, and it had the peculiar smell Iva Claire had come to associate with the South. She was used to the normal backstage odor of dust and sweat; she'd been breathing that since she'd started working at five. But theaters in the South—the New Court was in Beltraine, Georgia—also smelled from dampness that never completely dried because of the hot, humid air.

  Actually, Iva Claire didn't mind the heat or the dampness or even the smell. She'd been wanting to play a southern circuit ever since she found out she and Mama had family below the Mason-Dixon line. But no matter how broke they were, Mama would never take a booking in the South. Iva Claire was pretty sure the reason had to do with Mama's family, but Mama refused to talk about it, and if Iva Claire pushed her she would get one of her headaches. There were lots of things that Mama wouldn't talk about. Like the fact that she was scared to be in Georgia. She said she wasn't, and she had screamed at Iva Claire for suggesting it, but Iva Claire knew that ever since they'd gotten to Beltraine, which was their first stop in the state, Mama had been having trouble breathing—a sure sign she was upset. And it was all Iva Claire's fault.

  Don't think about that, she told herself firmly.

  She walked to the middle of the stage where the movie screen was to see how shallow their playing space would be. The New Court was a vaud-and-pic house, which meant they showed motion pictures and offered a live vaudeville show in between. It wasn't a great booking, but it was a miracle that the Sunshine Sisters had gotten it. They would
n't have if another act on the tour hadn't dropped out in North Carolina. Mama and Iva Claire had joined the troop there two months ago. They were what was known as a disappointment act.

  If she was honest about it, Iva Claire knew the Sunshine Sisters were a disappointment in more ways than one. Their act was terrible—what performers called a fish because it stank. Part of the problem was their material. Vaudeville audiences liked funny patter, snappy songs, and pretty girls who showed a little leg. The Sunshine Sisters wore old-fashioned costumes with long skirts, they sang droopy songs by Stephen Foster, and they didn't have any patter at all. Then there was Mama's performance. Mama had a pretty voice but she tried too hard, which made her movements stiff and her singing shrill. When the audience didn't like her, she tried harder—and got stiffer and more shrill. Iva Claire sighed. The Stephen Foster act was new; Mama had put it together and she loved it with all her heart. She'd never see how bad it was—and Iva Claire would never tell her.

  “The sight lines in this old dump are as good as the sound,” a light high voice called out from the darkened house. “I've been watching you while you were singing, and there's no place where the audience can't see you.” Iva Claire whirled around to see Tassie walking up the center aisle of the theater. Tassie was about a year older than Iva Claire, and she traveled with a couple known as Benny Ritz and Irene DeLoura. Ritz and DeLoura were the headliners of the troupe. Their comedy routine was the best thing in the show.

  Iva Claire and Tassie hadn't said more than a couple of words to each other since the Sunshine Sisters joined the troop, but Iva Claire had been curious about the older girl and her connection to DeLoura and Ritz. Tassie was way too young to be their daughter.

  “I brought you your sheet music,” Tassie announced. As she came closer, Iva Claire could see through the gloom that she was carrying a pile of papers. “And I got us a couple of gum erasers,” she added.