Garden of Lies

by Eileen Goudge

  She stopped in the open doorway, her heart, too, seeming to come to a standstill.

  Max was crouched in front of the oak cabinet behind his desk, unloading files into a carton. “Max, what on earth is going on?”

  He glanced up, giving her a sheepish smile. “Well, I guess it looks like I’m moving.”

  Some kind of joke, of course. And not a funny one.

  Rose scanned the office, saw how empty it looked, his desktop swept clean, cartons stacked over by the glass-front bookcase.

  Oh, Mother of God, he was not joking.

  Rose felt as if she had run for miles and miles ... only to cross the finish line too late. Hot, aching all over, blood pounding. She wanted to lie down, somewhere dark and cool, away from the pain [486] in her chest, from this nightmare, from the awful sight of Max packing his things in that box.

  This isn’t happening. I’ll walk out of here, and when I walk back in again, everything will be just as it was. Exactly the same as before.

  “What is this? Max? For God’s sake, tell me.”

  “I tried to call you last night,” he said. “Your line was busy. I was going to tell you. I’m sorry you had to be surprised this way.”

  “That’s funny, that’s really funny, because I tried to call you last night. I tried calling you all weekend as a matter of fact.”

  Who could she have been talking to when Max called? Oh, of course, Clare, calling from Syracuse, babbling, so upset she could hardly talk straight. Nonnie. Another stroke, a minor one, but still worrisome. So Rose had had to spend half an hour calming her down, all the while wanting to hang up, so the line could be free in case Max called.

  And he had called ... but only to tell her good-bye.

  Jesus. The irony of it struck her, and Rose started to laugh and cry at the same time.

  Max looked up at her, smiling, a bewildered expression on his face. “Want to let me in on it?”

  “Oh, Max, you look so funny squatting down there. Like ... like ... oh, I don’t know ... like I caught you with your hand in the cookie jar, or something.” Tears squeezed from the corners of her eyes, and wet her temples.

  Then he was rising, his face red and hot-looking, gazing at her with such a woebegone expression that her laughter abruptly stopped.

  “I’m taking over the litigation department in L.A.,” he explained. “It all happened kind of suddenly, and you were so caught up in that trial ... I didn’t want to throw you this until ...”

  “Is it what you want, Max, is this really what you want?”

  Max shrugged, almost grinned, the ghost of a grin. “It’s a great opportunity. And Mandy loves it out there. I’ll have her summers, school vacations, that kind of thing. I took her out with me to look around last weekend. We even got in some pool time.” He rolled up the sleeve of his shirt, showing a forearm toasted golden brown. “Look, you believe it? In the middle of November. Yeah, there’s worse places to be than California.”

  God, Max really was leaving. And for good.

  [487] Rose felt as if the floor—with its parquet floor and Oriental rug—had unhinged suddenly like a trapdoor, dropping her into black space.

  Max, her staunch, never-failing pillar of support. The one friend she had counted on completely. She had taken him for granted, like the good air she breathed, always there.

  And now ... She wanted to say, Max, don’t go. I need you. I want you.

  But the words wouldn’t come. She’d just be making a fool of herself ... embarrassing them both. Max had already left her. That was clear. In his mind and heart he’d already put three thousand miles between them. He’d been traveling those miles probably from the minute he walked out her door four months ago, when she had not done one thing to stop him.

  It’s too late. The terrible realization sank home like a blow.

  “When?” she asked.

  “A week. I’d prefer more time to finish up things here, but Gary says it’s a broken rudder out there.” He spread his hands in a helpless gesture. “So here I am, trying to clean up twenty-three years. I don’t suppose you’d care to give me a hand.”

  Rose made a sound in her throat, a sob she just barely managed to hold back. She ducked her head, so he wouldn’t see the pain in her face. Then she pasted a phony smile on, and spoke in a bright, congratulatory tone.

  “Love to, but I have an appointment. I’m in kind of a rush. But, hey, listen, if you’re not too busy, we’ll have lunch or something before you go, okay? Champagne and everything.”

  “Sure thing.” Max was on his knees again, digging into the bottom drawer of a file cabinet. He waved a manila file absently in her direction. “I’ll check and clear a date soon as I can find my calendar under all this rubble.”

  Rose paused, taking in the scene, memorizing it, grainy with the early afternoon light that sifted in through the Venetian blinds. Max’s bent head, the hump of his broad back pulling the back of his shirt taut across the shoulders. One wrinkled tail had worked out over the waistband of his gray slacks, and she remembered him once saying, when they were in the shower together, that he was “built like an old buffalo.”

  She thought of that now. A buffalo. Somewhere she’d read [488] that the Plains Indians, if caught in a blizzard while out hunting, kept from freezing by killing a buffalo, then cutting open its belly and crawling inside until the storm had passed. And that’s what she’d done with Max, wasn’t it? She’d used him to stay warm.

  What else should she have expected? That he’d be here, waiting with open arms for her forever? No. She had hurt him. And he had done what any sane person would do.

  And now it was too late.

  She had imagined herself unwinding with Max over a glass of wine at the end of the day, the way they used to. She, telling him everything about the trial; how it had climaxed, the settlement meeting this morning. And the thing that had been puzzling her, haunting her all night long, the weird coincidence of her long-ago guardian angel turning out to be Rachel’s mother.

  If only they could go home now, uncork that bottle of wine, take it to bed with them, then after they’d made love, as she lay in his arms, they would talk about everything, just like before. Only it usually had been her talking, asking advice ... and Max listening, hadn’t it?

  Now suddenly there was so much she wanted to know about Max. But there wasn’t time. She’d lost her chance.

  Rose, feeling tears coming, turned away, and slipped out the door.

  Chapter 37

  “The Lord will open to them the gate of paradise, and they will return to that homeland where there is no death, but only lasting joy. ...”

  Rose listened to the young priest’s words, her eyes dry as she watched him place a wooden cross on top of the simple white-painted coffin.

  Lasting joy? she echoed in her mind. Well, I hope so. God knows Nonnie took no joy in living. Let her get what she can out of death.

  She was surprised at how little emotion she felt. I’m not sorry she’s dead, how could I be? But I’m not glad, either.

  And, really, wasn’t this what Nonnie had been toiling toward, all those First Fridays and Sunday masses, the endless rosaries and confessions, accumulating points for admission to heaven as if life itself was not much more than a giant bingo game?

  Thank God, at least, it had been quick. A series of tiny strokes following Clare’s call last week, and then Nonnie had slipped away in the middle of the night. Everyone had been spared, Nonnie most of all, the nightmare that would have followed if she’d lived. Bedridden, her mind gone, an oversized infant to be fed, changed, washed, diapered.

  Rose glanced over at Marie, seated beside her on the wooden pew. Thinner than ever, and older, yet oddly dignified, holding herself straight, face flinty as an Indian-head nickel, wearing a ratty navy coat with a bit of torn lining drooping from one sleeve.

  Rose felt the same old pity and irritation rise up inside her. Look at her, still as aloof as a cat. Marie would seldom chat on the phone, and she’d al
ways come up with some excuse to turn down Rose’s invitations to lunch, to dinner, a night out on the town. Rose was tired of always being the one to make the effort, so she hadn’t [490] seen Marie in a year or more. And now, here they were ... God, what a rotten reason for getting together.

  She felt rotten, too. Weary, a heaviness in her bones. Tomorrow, she reminded herself. Tomorrow Max leaves for California.

  The thought was like one of Nonnie’s knitting needles piercing into her heart.

  God, she missed him already, and the pain of it kept getting worse. How stupid she’d been, how blind. And why, she agonized, why is it that the things that matter most, we get so close, we don’t see them?

  So different from the way she had felt about Brian. Max had never been pure and shining, enthroned on an altar in her heart, an icon. No, he was something that was lived in. Like a house full of nicks and jumble and worn chair arms, and more wonderful than any immaculate palace.

  I’m going to start crying any minute now—that would be funny, wouldn’t it? Everyone thinking I was crying for Nonnie?

  No, not even poor Nonnie deserved that, tears at her funeral shed for someone else.

  Rose forced her attention back to the priest. Old Father Donahue had retired, she’d heard. So this cherub-faced kid—why, he looked hardly older than an altar boy!—had to be his replacement. Strange, Holy Martyrs without wizened little Father Donahue in his green and white vestments.

  And instead of Donahue’s mumbling drone, this bright and youthful voice ringing out over the mostly empty pews.

  “Oh God, you are my God whom I seek; for you my flesh pines and my soul thirsts like the earth, parched, lifeless and without water. ...”

  Yes, lifeless, that’s how she felt without Max.

  “... You are my help, and in the shadow of your wings I shout for joy. My soul clings fast to you; your right hand upholds me.”

  A soft burbling sound now, someone was crying.

  Rose looked beyond Marie, hard-eyed and stony-faced, to where Clare sat, head bowed, her face hidden by the flowing gray wings of her wimple. Clare reminded her of a feather pillow, soft and shapeless, plumped there on the bench. If only she would stop crying, for heaven’s sake. As if Nonnie’s dying hadn’t been a blessing, really.

  [491] “She went just like that—” Rose heard Clare mutter weepily to Marie, “like a light going off. Oh, I feel so terrible. So ... so responsible.”

  “Why should you feel responsible?” Marie whispered back impatiently. “It’s not as if you killed her.”

  Rose watched Clare’s round, tear-swollen face go still with shock at the very idea.

  For an instant, Rose almost felt sorry for Clare. Then she remembered it hadn’t been Clare who had cared for Nonnie these last years, but the orderlies and nurse’s aides in a Catholic nursing home. Clare had done little more for Nonnie than she had in the past. Except to pray, of course. Clare was a real pro at praying.

  At last, the service was over, the young fresh-faced priest making the sign of the cross over Nonnie’s coffin. My God, Rose thought, he didn’t even know her.

  She felt a shiver run through her. The sudden horrible notion came over her that Nonnie wasn’t really dead, that inside that coffin, she lay grinning, waiting to spring out at them like some ghoulish jack-in-the-box.

  Then Rose realized Marie was fussing with her coat, reaching for her purse.

  “I have to get back,” she said. “The baby-sitter could only promise me an hour.”

  “You’re not coming out to the cemetery?” Clare asked, her doughy face seeming to sag.

  “To watch somebody shovel dirt over her?” Marie shrugged. “No, thanks.” Then she softened the tiniest bit, giving Clare’s hand an absent pat. “Look, I really do have to get back. Missy’s sick, and Bobby was looking a little peakish this morning.” One corner of her thin mouth twisted up. “Like they say, ‘Life goes on,’ you know?”

  Rose saw that Clare had turned from Marie to her now, her expression beseeching.

  Rose stiffened, thinking, I can’t stand any more of this. But then she thought, Is it fair, leaving Clare to deal with these mourners alone? Mrs. Slatsky, and that bunch of old crones from the auxiliary.

  Yes, that’s what I would have done before—the so-called proper thing—in the days when I used to be a doormat. But that has changed. I have changed.

  And, mostly, she had Max to thank for that.

  [492] “I’m going back with Marie,” Rose found herself saying. “Why don’t you go on alone to the cemetery, Clare.” Kindly, she added, “I think that’s what Nonnie would have wanted, don’t you?”

  Anyway, there was something she had to talk about with Marie. Alone. Something Marie might be able to help her with.

  Rachel’s mother—yes, Sylvie was her name. It could be that Marie knew something.

  Rachel touched her ear. And if she does know something, then maybe I can figure out why Sylvie Rosenthal gave me this earring all those years ago.

  Marie’s apartment hadn’t changed. The same gloomy cave of a living room, with its stale nicotine smell. The same motel-style furniture, but shabbier now than it used to be. The playpen was gone, and a hockey stick was propped in the corner by the TV, a nude and contorted Barbie doll on the rug.

  “Just set that on the floor, and have a seat,” Marie said, pointing to the overflowing laundry basket on a Laz-y-Boy recliner crisscrossed with friction tape. “By the way, Bobby went nuts over that Atari game you sent him for his birthday. Can’t pry him away from it.”

  “I know. He sent me a nice thank-you note. He’s a great kid, Marie. They all are. You’re doing a good job raising them.”

  The sound of television filtered in from the bedroom off the living room. All three of Marie’s kids were in there, clustered around Missy’s sickbed, watching “The Mod Squad.” Rose promised herself she would spend some time with each of them before she left, and Bobby was old enough to stay over with her in the city sometimes. She would suggest it to Marie. ...

  “Jesus,” Marie was now saying, “you’re getting to sound almost as holier-than-thou as Sister Clare. That what being a bigshot lawyer does to you?”

  Before Rose could take offense, Marie had slumped onto the couch, all the starch seeming to have gone out of her. She lit a cigarette, and peered up at Rose through the smoke.

  “Oh, hell, don’t pay any attention to me,” Marie said and sighed. “I just get so damn stir-crazy rattling around here all by myself with the kids off at school. It turns you mean after a while.”

  [493] “Where’s Pete?” Rose asked.

  “Pete!” Marie snorted. “He left. Moved out. A couple weeks ago. Didn’t I tell you? Oh well, good riddance as far as I’m concerned.”

  “But ... what ...” Rose stopped herself, thought better of asking, What are you living off of then? At least while Pete was around you had his unemployment check.

  The chilly look in Marie’s eyes didn’t invite any sisterly concern.

  “Can I get you something? Coffee?” Marie asked.

  “No, don’t bother ... please. I can’t stay long anyway.” Rose took a deep breath. “Marie, I came to ask you ... about ... about something Nonnie said a long time ago. About our mother ... how she might have ... well, that I might not have the same father as you and Clare.”

  Marie was staring at her as if she’d lost her marbles. “You serious? What do you care what that old bat said? She was always stirring up trouble. I don’t care if she is dead, it’s the truth, ain’t it? She liked making us squirm. Anyway, what difference does it make now?”

  “I just want to know, that’s all. I thought maybe ... well, that maybe you knew something. That Nonnie might have told you—”

  Marie’s eyes cut away from hers, and all of a sudden she seemed tense as an alleycat. “I told you. I don’t know any more than you do.” She sounded irritated. “Now, why don’t you just forget about it?”

  But Rose couldn’t stop. This thing was eati
ng away at her, and she knew it wasn’t her imagination. Sylvie Rosenthal. Seeing her in that courtroom, seeing that flicker of recognition in her eyes. She knew something. And Rose was certain it had to do with her real father. Not the smiling sailor in the silver-framed photograph, Nonnie’s son, Marie and Clare’s father, but the man from whose seed she had sprung, someone dark and different-looking, so that she’d been set apart from her sisters from the day she was born.

  “If another man was my father, then he must have had family, right?” She pushed on, desperate. “A wife maybe? A sister? And this wife or sister, she might have known. About me. She might have wanted to see me. ...”

  Marie rose abruptly, clutching at the throat of her dress. “I told you I don’t know anything about that! You’re dreamin’, that’s all. [494] You’re just dreamin’.” She busied herself with the laundry basket, yanking an undershirt from the tangled pile and folding it in one savage motion. “Look, I’ve got a lot to do. So if you’re leavin’ anyway, don’t let me keep you.”

  Rose felt a surge of angry frustration. Marie was lying, she had to be. Rose was sure of it. Marie was hiding something.

  Rose leaned forward in her chair, grasping the plastic rim of the laundry basket, forcing Marie to look at her.

  “For God’s sake. Marie.”

  “I told you, I—”

  “I know what you said, but I think you do know something. Oh, Marie, don’t do this to me. All my life I’ve felt different, an outcast in my own family, and now you’re turning against me.”

  Rose jumped to her feet. She was trembling, furious with her sister, and at the same time aching with need.

  “I have to know—” Rose choked, searching for the right words, “who I am. Don’t you see? I ... I’m not asking for anything else. If my real father has a family, I won’t bother anyone, I don’t want to stir up trouble. I just want to know.”

  Now Marie was glaring at her, feverish color staining her pale, sharp-boned cheeks.

  Then Marie collapsed onto the sofa, and burst into tears.