Garden of Lies

by Eileen Goudge

  Fear took hold of Rose’s heart. She thought of dreadful things. She wouldn’t get pregnant, but she could be struck down by a car while crossing the street. Or fall in front of a subway train. Or—

  She stopped; the pressure on her heart was hurting now. Then she realized what the very worst punishment of all would be.

  Losing Brian.

  “... but deliver us from evil. Amen.”

  Rose completed the last Our Father. Looking up, she saw that it was dark and the church nearly empty. Her knees ached, and her stomach was growling. It had to be past dinnertime.

  [61] She rose stiffly and sidled from the pew, wincing as she genuflected. Then, dipping her finger in the holy water in the vestibule, and crossing herself, she went outside.

  Rose walked the sidewalks quickly in the fading light. Clouds had formed overhead, and it was starting to rain. Fat tepid droplets broke against her face.

  Chin tucked against her collar, she hurried down Coney Island Avenue. This time of the evening the street reminded her of a boardwalk closed for the winter. Striped awnings folded back, heavy metal shutters or accordion gates drawn across storefronts. Even the pretzel man had left his corner. She glimpsed the back of his black coat flapping as he trotted across the street, pushing his cart.

  Still, the avenue teemed with life. Car horns blaring, people scurrying to get out of the rain. Rose heard a burly trucker bellow to the driver of a Plymouth who was kissing his tail and honking like crazy, “Aaaayyyy, mistah, I’ll ram ya fuckin’ front end up ya nose.”

  She quickened her step. Loose rubbish—leaves of newspaper, bits of Styrofoam, straw wrappers, empty cigarette packs—blew across her path. She felt lonelier than any other time she could think of.

  She hadn’t seen Brian since that night on the roof, a week ago. He was avoiding her. Why? Was he sorry about what had happened? Too embarrassed to face her?

  Guilt gnawed at her. It’s my fault, I made him kiss me. I led him into sin, just like Eve did with Adam.

  Was this to be God’s punishment ... taking Brian away from her?

  Oh please, God, please, I’ll do anything if you give him back. I’ll give up meat every day of the week, not just Friday. I’ll fast for forty days on Lent. I’ll devote my life to serving others.

  When Rose came into the apartment, Nonnie was watching “The Lawrence Welk Show.” She barely glanced up from her knitting.

  “You’re late,” she croaked. “I left supper in the oven for you.” Since the night Marie left, Nonnie had been keeping off Rose’s back. Rose wondered if her grandmother was regretting her awful words.

  “That’s okay. I’m not hungry,” Rose said.

  [62] In the tiny dark bedroom she’d shared with Marie, the other bed was bare, sheets removed, its worn chenille spread pulled tight over the mattress. Clean circles in the dust atop the dresser marked the places where Marie’s bottles of perfume and skin lotions had stood. Gone, too, the snapshots and twenty-five-cent photo-booth strips that had been tucked inside the mirror frame. In Marie’s side of the closet, the empty hangers swung together with a hollow metallic ticking as Rose hung up her sweater.

  It was as if Marie had died. Rose shivered and, only half-aware of what she was doing, made the sign of the cross.

  Then, crouching on the floor, she peeled back a frayed edge of the mustard-brown carpeting that had come untacked. Underneath was a loose floorboard. She found the metal nail file she kept in the bottom dresser drawer, and pried up the loose board with it. Underneath was a space just big enough for an old metal Band-Aid box. Her secret place. No one else knew about it. Not Marie. Not even Brian.

  Rose opened the Band-Aid box, and shook out a lump of gray cotton. Slowly, she unwrapped it, revealing the glittering treasure hidden within.

  A ruby earring, gleaming in her hand like a frozen drop of blood.

  The memory came rushing back. Seven years ago—had it been that long? She saw it in her mind as clearly as if it were happening now. The elegant lady in the mink coat. Rose had seen her standing just outside the schoolyard fence one day. She didn’t look like any of the mothers. More like a queen. Or a mysterious movie star, in that beautiful mink coat, and a hat with a little veil that dipped over her eyes.

  Then she’d realized those mysterious eyes underneath the veil were staring at her. At first Rose had been sure she was wrong. She’d even glanced back over her shoulder to see if there was someone behind her. But, no, the lady was looking straight at her. Her eyes big and somehow wet-looking, like the clear green marbles in her collection, the ones that were worth ten cat’s eyes.

  Rose cautiously drew a little closer. Sad and lost, that’s how the lady looked. But it didn’t make any sense. Why should she be? Someone dressed as beautiful as that had to be rich, and rich people [63] never had worries like the grown-ups Rose knew. It was a cold day, and the lady seemed to shiver, drawing her mink coat more tightly about her. Ruby earrings twinkled in her ears. What could she want?

  As Rose came through the gate amid the noisy, jostling throng of classmates, the woman took several jerky steps forward, crying out in a thin strangled voice, “Wait!”

  Startled, Rose paused, remembering that she’d been told by Nonnie and the Sisters, not once but at least fifty times, never ever to talk to strangers. But somehow she couldn’t run away. Her saddle shoes felt as if they were stuck onto the sidewalk. Her arms and legs frozen in place.

  Rose waited, as if hypnotized by that beautiful, somehow haunted face, its fragile bones jutting from pale creamy skin. Soft hair, the color of autumn leaves, floated over her fur collar. Rose was reminded of a snowflake that would melt if she touched it. The woman’s flowerlike mouth trembled. Her eyes brimmed with tears. She seemed on the verge of speaking, but she pulled back abruptly as if she’d changed her mind.

  Instead, she reached up with a gloved hand—it had been trembling, Rose remembered—and unscrewed the ruby from her right ear.

  As Rose stood there, too shocked to protest, the lady pressed the tiny earring, icy cold, into her palm. Then she had run off, high heels clattering on the frozen sidewalk, ducking into a long sleek limousine that waited at the curb, disappearing as if in a puff of smoke.

  Rose had been sure of it. The lady was her Guardian Angel. Everyone had one, Sister Perpetua said. But Rose hadn’t believed it was true for her ... until that day.

  And now she had the earring to prove it.

  Rose held it up to the light, a ruby in the shape of a teardrop dangling from a tiny gold and diamond stud. Even in the dim room, it blazed with a light of its own, causing Rose to suck her breath in with wonder even though she’d looked at it a hundred times. Yes, magic. Heaven-sent magic.

  And she needed its magic now, more than ever.

  “Don’t leave me, Bri,” she whispered, clenching it tightly in her fist, more passion in her heart than a thousand rosaries could have summoned. “Please don’t ever leave me.”

  Chapter 2

  NEW YORK CITY, 1963

  Rachel frowned at her plate, at the fried egg centered between two neat triangles of toast. Round as a daisy, and not a single bubble. Bridget, she knew, fried them inside a cookie cutter to keep the edges smooth. So they would be as perfect as everything in this house. The fork in her hand, Mama’s Carder silver, was polished to mirror brightness. She caught a distorted glimpse of her reflection in it now, round blue eyes, a scatter of light brown hair.

  “I’m not going,” Rachel said, quietly answering her mother’s question.

  How could she? After last night with Gil? Get dressed up, flirt, pretend nothing was wrong. God, what a joke that would be.

  Gil’s words came back now, pricking her, “Why don’t you just admit it, Rachel? You’re not so goddamn moral. That’s not why you won’t go all the way with me. It’s because you really don’t like sex. You’re frigid. Or maybe it’s a girl you want. ...”

  Rachel brought the tines of her fork down hard into the yolk, watching it burst, ooze across
the fine Blue Willow plate, obscuring the weeping willow and the three tiny figures crossing the bridge.

  She was furious at Gil—of all the pompous asses at Haverford, he took the prize!—but underneath the thought itched at her, God, what if it’s true?

  Face it, she told herself, it’s not just Gil who leaves you cold. Something’s been missing with every guy so far.

  Twenty, and still a virgin. Not, as Gil had pointed out, because she was so moral. No. Worse. The truth was, she just hadn’t felt like it so far.

  Rachel stared down at the ruined egg yolk, feeling slightly nauseated. Only this sickness had nothing to do with the mess on her plate, she knew, or the beers she’d drunk last night.

  [65] It all boiled down to sex, she thought. Everything. Fashions. Perfume. Magazine covers. Even those television ads for toothpaste. It seemed as if everyone in the whole world was either thinking about it, talking about it, or doing it.

  So what’s wrong with me?

  Was it like learning to swim? Either you were good at it, or you sank like a rock?

  Or maybe she’d been born this way. Normal on the outside. Pretty even. Rachel remembered when she was a child, Great-aunt Willie in her mink smothering her in a furry, perfumed embrace, then grabbing a handful of cheek in each gloved hand, crowing, “Just like a little baby doll! So dainty! And those blue eyes, Sylvie, she must have gotten them from Gerald! But where did that pretty little doll’s face come from? Not from you or your mama. I wonder who?”

  “The Girl with the Watering Can,” Rachel had replied solemnly.

  That was what Mama always said, anyway, that Rachel reminded her of the Renoir painting. She had showed Rachel the picture in a book, a little girl with waves of red-gold hair and bright Wedgwood-blue eyes that matched her dress, standing stiffly posed in a garden, holding a watering can.

  Rachel had hated that picture, and once in a black mood had scribbled over it with a crayon. Why were people always telling her she was dainty and cute and precious? She’d longed to run through the echoing rooms of their big house, instead of walking softly as Mama always admonished, to shout at the top of her lungs, and turn cartwheels on the patterned rugs. Not be like some doll or a girl holding a stupid watering can, but like a bird or a wild creature, doing as she pleased, not caring what people thought of her.

  Now she wondered if she had been worrying all that time about the wrong thing. Wishing she were tall and fierce like the Amazon women she’d read about, when all along there was something wrong with her on the inside. Some awful undetected deformity. Missing hormones, or a paralyzed sex drive. Or even, God forbid, something actually wrong with her down there.

  “Rachel, what’s gotten into you?” Mama’s voice broke into her thoughts.

  Rachel looked up. Daddy, she saw, was absorbed in his paper, but Mama was regarding her with that sad, faintly bewildered [66] expression she always seemed to wear whenever they disagreed about something. Could she tell Mama? Mama, who surrounded herself only with beautiful things, chamber music always on the stereo, silk scarves and embroidered handkerchiefs, her precious roses. She looked like a flower herself, slim and elegant, with those wide forest-green eyes and her pale, almost white-blond hair. Eight-thirty in the morning, and she already had on lipstick, wearing her daisy-print Lilly Pulitzer housecoat to see Daddy off to the bank.

  She’d probably be so shocked. She’s never talked about sex, at least not to me. I wonder if she’s ever felt that way, passionate about Daddy ... or anyone.

  “I’m just not up to it, that’s all,” Rachel said. “That calculus exam did me in; I had about twenty minutes’ sleep all last week.” She sighed, and picked up a triangle of toast, dipping one corner in the gooey egg. “When I went into pre-med, I thought I’d mostly be dissecting things like sheep’s eyes and cow hearts, not integers.”

  Rachel saw her mother wince. Plainly, Sylvie still hated the idea of her becoming a doctor. Rachel felt a flash of irritation toward her.

  Dammit, I won’t be like her. Like a pair of silk stockings, lovely but perishable. Doing Good Works, but not getting my hands dirty.

  Then Rachel was struck by a new, disturbing thought. Suppose I’m more like her than I realise. If Mama doesn’t care much for sex—and I couldn’t possibly imagine her doing It with Daddy the way Sophia Loren did It with Marcello Mastroianni in Divorce Italian Style—then what if a thing like that could be inherited, like the color of my eyes, or hair?

  “The party isn’t for another two weeks,” Sylvie reminded her gently. Her mother smiled faintly as she poured milk from a silver creamer into her coffee, and began slowly, gracefully, to stir it, her spoon chiming against the Limoges cup. “I was just thinking. Remembering when Mason taught you to swim—you must have been four or five. The first winter Daddy bought the place in Palm Beach. Isn’t that right, Gerald?”

  Daddy looked up from the Wall Street Journal. “Mmm? Oh, yes, yes. You and that little boy were always up to one thing or another. Most of it no good.” He caught Rachel’s eye, giving her a wink, and for an instant she felt the invisible ring that enclosed just the two of them.

  Then she thought with a pang, He looks so old.

  [67] Rubbed smooth with age, like Mama’s antique silver tea set. She saw the freckled ridge of his scalp beneath the silver hair fine as cobwebs, the rust that lightly blotched his face, and felt almost pain at the thought of how close she might be to losing him.

  She remembered when he used to lift her, swinging her up, up over his head. And she, suspended in the air, looking down into his sparkling eyes, seeing his love for her, perfect and shining, had felt ... oh, bliss.

  Then she thought of sitting in his lap in the dim, leather-smelling coolness of his study listening to music, such fun because each record had a story, and Daddy would tell it, pretending to be all the different characters. Some of them so silly, and some so sad. So by her eighth birthday, she knew every libretto by heart. Then he’d taken her, just the two of them, to the Metropolitan Opera, which she’d thought was the most beautiful place in the world, and they’d seen her favorite, The Marriage of Figaro.

  But now, damn it, he seemed not just thinner, but frail somehow, moving more cautiously, eyes somehow burning, as if there were a fire inside him, consuming him bit by bit.

  She remembered with a pang that awful day three years ago, when the call came that Daddy had been rushed to the Intensive Care Unit at New York Hospital. She had dashed over from school, and, too anxious even to wait for the elevator, had bolted up the stairwell. She finally reached his room, disheveled, out of breath, panting. Looking at him, gray and shrunken under the plastic oxygen tent like some mummified creature on display, tubes and wires running out of him, she had felt a mixture of despair and rage. Why couldn’t they do something, cure him, she—sixteen years old and just over five feet tall in her stockings—had wanted to scream at the orderlies, nurses, doctors, all of whom were doing nothing but talking to each other and scribbling notes on charts. Why weren’t they with him, working frantically to make him better? Rachel had longed so fiercely to heal him; she’d always remember that day, the precise minute even, gripping the cold metal bedframe, forehead lowered against the scratchy sheet, promising herself, and God, that if Daddy got well, she would become a doctor. So that she would never feel so stupid and helpless and dependent on people who wouldn’t do anything.

  Rachel pushed that memory away. Mason. They’d been talking [68] about Mason Gold, hadn’t they? “I remember he almost drowned me,” she said with a laugh. “He called me a dumb old sissy-girl, and I was so mad I jumped into the deep end and sank like a rock.”

  Sylvie looked up, her deep-green eyes widening, disturbed. “You never told me that.”

  That’s the least of it, Mama, Rachel thought.

  She shrugged. “Would you ever have let me near that pool again if I had?”

  There was a moment of silent acknowledgment, a look passing between Gerald and Sylvie. Rachel became aware of house s
ounds, comforting in their familiarity, the clackety noises of Bridget washing up in the kitchen, the low grunt of Portia under the table as she scratched herself, the chiming of the clock on the mantel. She thought: God, they’re thinking what it would have been like if I’d drowned, if they’d lost me.

  She felt weighted down, like a huge heavy backpack strapped to her shoulder; too much love, being their only child.

  How she had longed for a baby sister, or a baby brother. But though Mama had kept the crib in the nursery for the longest time, no babies ever came. And so Rachel had played instead with an endless parade of dolls—presented with great fanfare each birthday and Chanukah, in shiny boxes wrapped with big satin bows—Muffie dolls, bride dolls, a Betsy Wetsy, and Barbie—but had always lost interest when she realized that no amount of imagining could make them into a real baby sister she could hold and love, who would love her back.

  Rachel watched her mother continue to stir her coffee while it grew cold, her long slender fingers nearly as translucent as the porcelain cup. Rachel’s gaze went past Sylvie, taking in the dark glow of the Sheraton sideboard adorned with candelabra and silver serving dishes. And on the other wall, Mama’s china closet with the Baccarat crystal twinkling behind the diamond panes. Lovely ... so much a part of her, as if the seams between Mama and this house had been rubbed away with time, the two flowing together, harmonious, inseparable.

  Yet what was it about Mama, the odd way she seemed to turn inward at times? Rachel couldn’t remember not feeling it, that faint sadness, like a shadow falling between them. When Mama hugged [69] her, it was too tightly, almost choking her. As if she were afraid Rachel might slip away.

  Birthdays, especially, when Mama didn’t know Rachel was watching, the smiles that never quite reached her eyes. Rachel would blow out the candles, wishing year after year for the same thing: Please, let my mother be happy.