The Ladies of Garrison Gardens

by Louise Shaffer

  “After five years she was free to go wherever she wanted in the North or the West. I didn't want her coming south—especially not to Georgia. I told her if she came down here, the checks would stop.” For the first time he looked at Iva Claire. “You want to know how I felt when I left you with her? Guilty. I'd never felt so guilty about anything.”

  It wasn't as good as if he'd said, I wanted you, and I hated not being able to keep you with me, or, even better, I loved you and I made the mistake of my life when I gave you up. But it was something. The rest would come after he got to know her.

  “You seem like a nice girl,” he said. “Very intelligent. Can I give you some advice?”

  She nodded eagerly.

  “Don't let Lilianne use you.”

  “Mama wouldn't.”

  “You know better than that.”

  “Mama may not be like other mothers, but she loves me.”

  “Just be careful,” he said gently.

  He got up and went into one of the closets. A few seconds later he came back with a suitcase. It was made of caramel-brown leather with hinges and a lock that shone like gold. There was a fancy gold monogram on one side. It probably cost several months' worth of food and rent money for her and Mama.

  “That's beautiful,” she breathed. He started packing her belongings in it. “You're giving it to me? I can't take that!”

  “Yours is broken,” he said. He finished packing and handed the suitcase to her.

  “You want me to leave? Now?” she asked.

  He nodded. He couldn't look at her.

  “But you haven't gotten to know me yet. I can guarantee you'll like me when you do. I'm very—”

  “Iva Claire, stop!” It was the first time he'd used her name.

  “But we haven't had enough time—”

  “This isn't going to lead to anything. You're not a part of my life. We've seen each other. You've asked some questions, and I've done my best to answer them. But this is as far as it goes.”

  It was like getting hit really hard. Then she went numb.

  “I know you think that's cruel of me,” she heard him say, “but it's the kindest thing I can do for you.”

  Actually, he was right. The numbness killed all feeling. She knew if she could have felt the pain, it would have drowned her. But she was able to take the expensive, beautiful suitcase he was holding out to her and stumble toward the door. He got there first and opened it for her.

  “Good luck,” he said. She didn't tell him that you never say good luck to someone in show business.

  She left the hotel and started to walk down Peachtree Street. She didn't get back on the streetcar, because she couldn't sit still. She had to keep moving. The beautiful suitcase bounced at her side, her father's gift bruising her leg.

  “You're not a part of my life,” he'd said.

  Don't think, don't think, don't think.

  It started to rain the way it did in the South, a sudden downpour that happened so fast the sun was still out. Her dress got soaked and stuck to her body, flapping heavily around her legs. The water squished out of her shoes. The beautiful suitcase was getting ruined. She cradled it in her arms, trying to protect it with her body, but the rain kept coming down, spattering and staining the smooth rich leather.

  She walked the entire mile from the Georgian Palace Hotel to Terminal Station. She'd always thought of herself as a person who was very realistic—Mama had had enough dreams for both of them—but now she knew that in her own way she'd been dreaming too. She'd dreamed that she'd find a way to make a new life for herself. Now she knew better. She didn't have money for school and she never would. She couldn't leave Mama because Mama was all she had. She was trapped. She bought her ticket and boarded the train that would take her back to Mama and Tassie and the New Court Theater. And the Sunshine Sisters.

  Chapter Thirty-three

  THE TRAIN WAS LATE getting in to Beltraine, so she walked into the hotel room just as Mama was coming home from the theater after the last show. The first thing Mama saw was the suitcase. And, of course, she recognized the gold monogram on the side.

  “Oh, my God, Iva Claire. What have you done?” she demanded. “You went to see him, didn't you?”

  It would have been silly to pretend she didn't know who Mama was talking about. Besides, she was too exhausted to try. Iva Claire nodded and braced herself for screaming and crying and things being thrown around the room. But Mama didn't move.

  “So now you know what he's like,” she said quietly.

  Iva Claire nodded again.

  “You were hoping he'd take you in, weren't you? Do want to get away from me that much?”

  If there ever was a time to try to explain how she felt about show business and school and having a real home, this was it. But Mama's big dark eyes were begging not to be hurt; she was holding herself stiffly as if she was waiting for a blow.

  “Am I that bad, Claire de Lune?”

  She was so small. So very, very small.

  “Mama, I don't want to leave you.” She'd never felt so tired. But she walked across the room and put her arms around the rigid little body. “I'll never leave you, Mama.”

  Mama pulled away to face her. “Then why did you go?”

  “I was . . . curious. You never talk about him. You wouldn't tell me where I'm from. I wanted to know . . . that's all. Now I do. And I'm sorry I went.” That last part was honest, at least.

  “Are you sure?” Mama's eyes were still begging. “I know sometimes I can be . . . hard on you.”

  “You're the best mama there ever was.”

  Mama's smile was bright enough to light up Broadway. “I'm so glad!” She hugged Iva Claire. “Now you'll come back into the act and everything will be wonderful. We're going to be so happy, Claire de Lune, I promise.”

  It was Benny who solved the problem of keeping Tassie in the act.

  “We'll make it a trio,” he told Iva Claire. “You know that stuck-up way you act when you're onstage? Like you're too good for everyone around you? We can use that. And we'll find some places where you can mimic Tassie too. That's a real gift you got.”

  So Iva Claire became the third Sunshine Sister. She wore Mama's costume even though it was too small and they had to adjust it. Tassie kept on wearing Iva Claire's, which was too big for her, because that was crucial to the shtick. They made a new dress for Mama out of a shiny pink fabric. Benny rehearsed them in a new routine; Tassie was still the sister who couldn't do anything right, and Iva Claire became the snooty one who tried to keep her in line, while Mama was oblivious to it all. Tassie did all her bits, walking up her own skirt, battling with her rose, but now Iva Claire gave her dirty looks that eventually led to shoving and a carefully choreographed fight. By the end of the act, Tassie and Iva Claire were rolling around on the floor, while Mama sang her heart out about starlight and dewdrops.

  “We got ourselves a female knockabout comedy team!” Benny said proudly. Then he added, “We gotta drop the Rain part of the name though; it's too hokey. Just call yourselves the Sunshine Sisters, plain and simple. Has a nice ring to it.”

  Tassie was overjoyed to have Iva Claire back in the act. “I'll never forget what you did, giving me your part,” she said. “But it's much better this way.”

  Iva Claire could never explain that she hadn't done it for Tassie. She had simply tried to escape.

  The new act worked. In the old days, Rain and Rain had always played the deuce, which meant they were the second team to go on. It was the spot reserved for the worst act on the bill. But when they opened in Alabama, the manager of the Melody took them out of the deuce and put them just ahead of DeLoura and Ritz for the closing. For the first time in their history, the Sunshine Sisters didn't have to worry about getting canned.

  When the tour ended in Louisiana, there was a new decision to be made. The Sunshine Sisters were going back to New York, and Tassie was supposed to be going with Benny and Irene to the farm they'd bought in New Jersey for their retirem
ent. Everyone knew what Tassie wanted to do, and it didn't include growing vegetables.

  “She's got the business in her blood,” said Benny.

  “When I was her age, if someone told me I had to live on a farm I'da run like hell,” said Irene.

  But Benny had one stipulation. “Tassie's underage. We gotta get a lawyer and make this a legal arrangement,” he said. “We'll go to the same one in Georgia who wrote up the papers when we adopted Tassie.”

  Mama tried to get him to go to a lawyer in Louisiana, but no amount of arguing would change Benny's mind. “You don't know what a hard time we had finding a lawyer who would do this the last time,” he said. “All them other legal beagles said we had to wait for a court hearing, even though we was on the road and couldn't stay in one place. Couple of them wanted to put our girl in an orphanage, said the stage was no place to grow up. This guy did everything nice and simple and quick in his office. I had to pay an arm and a leg, but he done fine by Tassie.”

  So after the last night in New Orleans, Mama, Iva Claire, Tassie, Benny, and Irene took a train to Georgia. Benny's lawyer drew up papers saying Mama was Tassie's new guardian, and he changed her name from Tassie Ritz to Tassie Rain. Or at least, that was what he said he'd done. Iva Claire had her doubts about him. In fact, she didn't like him at all. His name was Stuart Lawrence.

  Chapter Thirty-four

  MRS. RAIN

  2004

  THE CHERRY CHILD was a good listener. Or maybe it was just that after so many years it was a pleasure to remember the old days and talk about them. It was carefully edited talk, to be sure, with the names changed to protect the not-so-innocent, but it still felt good.

  She never would have told Cherry any of it if the girl hadn't seen the picture of her in her Sunshine Sister costume. “You were an actress?” the girl had asked.

  She could have nodded and left it at that. But Cherry was looking at her the way no one had in seventy years. Once again she had an audience. It was a feeling you never ever forgot. Or stopped missing.

  “I was a vaudevillian, dear. There was a difference.”

  And that was how she started digging up the past for the entertainment of her young companion.

  “You tell such good stories, Mrs. Rain,” the girl said. “You make me laugh.”

  Well, of course she did. She'd been a performer, for heaven's sake. That was something you didn't lose just because you weren't as young as you used to be. Look at George Burns. Of course there were some stories she couldn't tell, some that weren't funny, that could make you cry—or worse. Those were not for young Cherry's ears.

  But shouldn't they be told to someone? At first the thought was too frightening, and she refused to let herself dwell on it. But her mind insisted on playing with it anyway, the way a person standing on the roof of a high building might play with thoughts of jumping. She could feel the idea taking hold of her.

  She wondered about her motives. Was she trying to assuage her Maker at the eleventh hour? After all, she couldn't live forever, and confession might clean the slate, celestially speaking. But the God she'd come to believe in was too hard-nosed to be taken in by contrition under duress. And confession for its own sake had a mawkish quality. She'd let her record stand and take her judgment when the time came. But it hadn't yet. And while she was still present on earth—however marginally—she couldn't shake the feeling that knowing the truth might be useful somewhere, somehow, to someone. Or perhaps it was just that, good or bad, her story was all she had, and she wanted someone to know and remember it after she was gone. The idea that kept her awake at night, repeating itself over and over in her brain, was that Laurel Selene McCready was the person who should become the keeper of her particular flame. After all, Ms. McCready had already inherited the loot—and Stuart Lawrence, Jr.

  Chapter Thirty-five

  LAUREL

  2004

  THE OLD WATER-STAINED SUITCASE sat on Laurel's bed. The dress and pinafore were inside, folded the way she'd found them, but she'd kept the sheet music out. The name of the song, “Beautiful Dreamer,” was familiar. But she wasn't sure she'd ever heard it.

  She'd taken the suitcase home because it fascinated her so much she couldn't leave it in Garrison Cottage. What the hell did it—and its weird contents—have to do with the great Miss Myrtis? A nasty little part of her was hoping the artifacts were connected to something so heinous in the saintly lady's life that it would trash her rep for good. But there was probably some simple—and saintly—explanation.

  Laurel looked down at the yellowed page in front of her. Someone had written something in the margin, in pencil, but the note had either been erased or it had faded too much to be read. She put the sheet music back into the suitcase, closed it, and put it on the floor of her closet. She'd have to ponder it later. Right now she had something more urgent to deal with. She went into her kitchen.

  The power-of-attorney form Stuart Junior had given her was on her kitchen table. It had been five days since he'd asked her to sign it.

  “Junior's daddy helped build the damn gardens,” she said to Patsy Cline, who had refused to go out with Peggy's mutts and was sitting at Laurel's feet in a way that was meant to let the intruders know once and for all who was the alpha dog. “He knows a hell of a lot more about them than I ever will.”

  Silence from the fearless watchdog guarding her feet.

  “But something about it doesn't sit right. Myrtis Garrison passes Senior on to Peggy, and then Senior passes Peggy on to Junior, and then Peggy passes Junior on to me.”

  It was a system that had worked since before she was born. And if Myrtis and Peggy had been okay with it, what was her problem?

  “That's the difference between a lady and me. They say please and thank you and they pass the tea. They do what's expected of them. Tell me what to do and I say, Kiss my ass. Dumb.”

  There was a grunt from Patsy Cline.

  “You weren't supposed to agree with me.”

  Patsy yawned and closed her eyes.

  “I can't put it off anymore. I'll go to his house right now and sign the damn thing in front of him. That should make his Sunday.”

  She found the phone number he'd given her and dialed, but before anyone could answer, she hung up. She refolded the power-of-attorney form, marched into her bedroom, and shoved it into the drawer where she kept her underwear. “I'll take care of it tomorrow,” she said. “Today, I have a date with a peach cobbler.”

  She dragged the protesting Patsy Cline outside to play with the other dogs, got the keys to the Camaro because there was no way she could picture Maggie climbing into the Viper, and took off.

  Every Sunday, directly after mass, Maggie went out to the nursing home to visit her old friend Lottie. Lottie's parents, Charlie Mae and Ralph, had worked for Maggie's family and lived in a cabin on their land. Maggie and Lottie had been best friends when they were children and, in spite of race, time, sickness, and tragedy, the friendship had endured.

  Six years ago, Lottie had had a stroke and had to move to the nursing home, and the Sunday visits began. For years Maggie had driven herself, with a freshly baked treat carefully cradled in a white linen towel on the passenger seat next to her. Peggy had put a stop to these trips after Maggie had a fender bender with a family of tourists who hadn't known that when Dr. Maggie's ancient Volvo was on the road you had to watch out for her tricky left side. After that, Maggie still drove herself for short runs around the town of Charles Valley, but for longer hauls, like the fifteen-mile trip to the nursing home, Peggy had taken over. Now, as with so much else that had been Peggy's, Laurel had inherited the weekly nursing-home trek.

  Not that she minded it. The drive was pretty, and Maggie's baking was not to be missed. She rotated Lottie's favorite cakes—red velvet, lemon, pound, and whiskey pecan with caramel icing—with a variety of seasonal cobblers and pies.

  Maggie was waiting for Laurel on her back porch. She came down the steps wearing a snazzy ensemble: cream-colored slac
ks, a matching blouse, and one of her new cardigans tied schoolgirl style over her shoulders. She looked relieved when she saw the Camaro.

  “I'm sure that new car of yours is perfectly lovely, Doodlebug,” she said, as soon as she and the cobbler were settled in the passenger seat, “but I think I'd feel like Dale Earnhardt Junior hopping into it.” Laurel shot her a startled look and tried to make her brain grasp the idea of Dr. Maggie, NASCAR fan.

  As usual, most of the staff and several of the residents turned up for the cobbler, and Maggie's eyes shone the way they always did when she was with Lottie. Lottie was confined to a wheelchair and her speech was limited, but Maggie managed to communicate with her just fine, holding Lottie's big stroke-gnarled hands in her small, beautifully manicured ones. There was something so connected about them, Laurel thought.

  It wasn't until the visit with Lottie was over and they were heading out of the nursing home that the shit hit the fan. That was when Maggie caught sight of a young aide in the hallway.

  “Grace,” she called out, “why didn't your mama go for those X-rays I ordered? When I didn't get the report, I called radiology at St. Francis, and they said she'd never come in. She needs to have—”

  “She will, Dr. Maggie,” Grace said. She was in her early thirties, tall and slim, with golden-brown skin and hazel eyes. Those eyes were filled with a fear that Laurel recognized only too well. “My sister and me, we just found out about it,” Grace said nervously. “Mama didn't want to tell us because she didn't have the money, and she knew we'd try to pay—”

  “Pay for X-rays? Why would she have to pay for them? Your mother's still working at the resort, isn't she?”

  “Yes, ma'am.”

  “All the Garrison employees have health insurance. That'll cover it.”

  “No, it won't. Mama canceled hers.”