Garden of Stones

  In her pocket was the fifty-eight cents she’d found that week as she cleaned. She didn’t trust Mrs. Sloat not to search her room while she was working, so she’d carried the money with her. It wasn’t a lot. But it was a start. She would have to figure out how much she would need to set out on her own. How much did a room cost, a coat, a streetcar ride? A bus ticket to a city, the bigger the better? Only in a city could Lucy live without being seen, without being singled out, ogled, isolated.

  In Los Angeles every year on her birthday, Lucy’s parents took her to the Beverly Wilshire or Perino’s. She and her mother wore new dresses, her father a dark suit, and people in the street paused to watch them arrive. But as the valet helped her mother out of the car, Lucy also saw the others, the ones in the back of the crowd, dressed in rags, begging for change. People ignored them, rushed around them, like a stream flowing around a stone lodged in the current.

  Lucy would be that stone, and the city would flow around her, indifferent and preoccupied. But unlike the beggars with their hollow eyes and gaunt expressions, Lucy would not ask for help. She would work hard and learn a trade. She would depend on no one. Her mother had already closed one avenue for her: no man would ever choose her. So be it. Lucy would make her own way.

  Inside the house, Sharon and Ruby worked in silence, washing and drying and stacking the dishes. Lucy scanned the bare sideboard hungrily.

  “Excuse me,” she said. “Is there... May I make myself a plate?”

  Sharon turned and regarded her coldly. “Mary didn’t say anything about that.”

  “Is she here? Did they already eat?”

  “She went to see Mr. Dang.”

  “That’s the fish man. He’s a Chinaman,” Ruby added shyly. She lacked her mother’s hard edges; there was a sweetness to her, an innocence that made it all right that she was staring openly at Lucy’s face. “But he’s nice. He comes around here a lot. Mrs. Sloat always drives down there to get the Sunday fish.”

  “It’s a long drive,” Sharon muttered, her arms plunged into the suds in the sink. “She won’t be back for a while, so I won’t be able to ask her, if we ought to fix you something. She should have left instructions.”

  The door clattered and Hal came into the kitchen, rubbing at his face with the back of his hand, his palms coated with dirt and grime.

  “Mercy!” Sharon exclaimed. “Get back outside, looking like that!”

  Hal grinned and walked past her to the sink, where he ran the taps full blast. “Smells good in here.”

  “There’s a perfectly good sink in the powder room,” Ruby said.

  “And walk on the carpet? Mom would kill me,” Hal said.

  “We’ve got a few legs left,” Ruby said. “You want ’em?”

  “Yes, please. Me and Leo been clearing barbed wire at the back of the lot. He’ll be along in a minute—he got snagged.” He patted his backside, and he and Ruby laughed. Even Sharon flashed a smile.

  Sharon handed her son a glass of milk, then went to the back door where the tin pails were lined up and fetched a large bowl. She lifted the cloth draped across the top, revealing a pile of golden chicken that made Lucy salivate.

  “Just fix me a plate to take with me,” Hal said. He drained the milk and went to the refrigerator to get the jug. “I want to take a look at that mower Leo’s been having trouble with. You want some?”

  It took Lucy a second to realize he was talking to her, raising the milk jug in her direction.

  “Um...yes? Please,” she added hastily.

  “I’ll fix you something too,” Sharon relented. “But take it outside. We have work to do.”

  Hal kissed his mother on the cheek and took his lunch out the back door, loping across the yard to the shed. Lucy carried her own plate and glass of milk onto the porch and sat on the top step. The chicken was delicious, better than anything she had eaten in years. She ate the skin first, then the tender meat, and then she sucked the bones. She licked the grease from her fingers and looked around for something to wipe her hands on. There was nothing. She wiped them on her bare legs, leaving shiny streaks.

  “You were hungry.” Ruby had come out onto the porch without Lucy hearing the door, and was watching her from the shadows. “Can I sit down with you?”

  “Yes.” Lucy scooted to the edge of the step, embarrassed, wondering how much Ruby had seen. All that was left on her plate was a neat pile of bones. “Thank you. It was really good.”

  “Mom’s chicken’s practically famous,” Ruby said. “Don’t mind her. She only acts mean. She don’t do it around Pop or Hal, only me. Guess ’cause she wants to teach me everything. I’m engaged,” she added, blushing. “I mean, we haven’t told anyone yet, but I’m going to marry this boy Paul.”

  Lucy relaxed, listening to Ruby’s chatter. When Garvey’s door opened and he wheeled down the ramp, Lucy stiffened and Ruby fell silent. They watched him wheel around the corner of the building, never looking their way.

  “Have you seen pictures of Garvey from before?” Ruby asked. “He was something!”

  “No.”

  “Wait here a minute, will you?” Ruby jumped to her feet. Then she bent down and took Lucy’s plate. “I can get that. Just...don’t go, okay?”

  Ruby disappeared into the house. When she came back moments later, she plopped down on the step next to Lucy, a scrapbook in her hands.

  “Mrs. Sloat’s parents built this place for her after her accident,” she said, opening the cover. The first page held a large photograph of the motel when it was new. A painted wooden sign sunk into a much more well-kept lawn read The Mountainview—Gateway to Whitney and Yosemite. The metal chairs in front of the door were the same, and the maples and magnolia trees lining the walk were freshly planted, not even the height of a man. A crowd of people posed on the porch of the big house, smiling. A caption read Grand Opening, 1935.

  “What accident?”

  “Oh...you don’t know about that?” Ruby was obviously happy to have a secret to share. “Mrs. Sloat went to college down at Mount St. Mary’s in Los Angeles, but she came home her senior year. They say she used to be real headstrong. Never even graduated, after they spent all that money—can you imagine? Anyway, this boy she knew at school came up for a visit, and she was with him when they had the accident. He drove his car right off Tuttle Creek Road, it spun twice and landed upside down and he was killed instantly. Mrs. Sloat’s leg was crushed. She was in the hospital for ages, over in Independence. I mean, I was just a kid then, but it was all anyone talked about.”

  “Is that why she limps?”

  “Yes, and she’s lucky for that. She couldn’t walk at all for a long time. Well, after that, her parents built the motel so she’d be set up for when they were gone.” Ruby dropped her voice and added, “Lots of folks say that’s why Mr. Sloat married her. Just to get his hands on the place.”

  Lucy thought about that possibility. She’d never noticed any affection between the two. They barely spoke, Leo spending his time puttering around doing chores or smoking his cigars and listening to the radio; he spent every morning in town at the diner with a handful of retired men.

  In fact, the entire family seemed to try to avoid each other: Mrs. Sloat at her desk checking people in and going through the mail and reading her magazines, Leo as absent as he could manage to be, Garvey locked away in his apartment, working on his creatures. “Was Garvey supposed to work in the motel too?”

  “Oh my, no, Garvey was supposed to marry
this little trust fund girl he met at school. Here, look.” She flipped a couple of pages and pointed to a photograph of a young man throwing a football on the lawn. “He’d just graduated from Cal. He came home before he started his new job up in Sacramento. He was going to be an engineer.”

  Lucy gawked. The man in the photo was beautiful, fair-haired and well built in a white shirt that set off a summer tan, laughing as he reached for the ball spiraling toward him. The features were Garvey’s, the fair hair the same, but the moment caught in the snapshot was infused with joy, with the energy of youth and optimism.

  “Of course he got called up not too long after that,” Ruby continued wistfully. “There’s the car his parents bought him. He barely ever drove it.”

  The same young man leaned against the door of a convertible, hamming it up for the camera. Sitting in the passenger seat was a beautiful girl with a spill of blond curls. Even in the black-and-white photo, Lucy could tell that her lipstick was bright and her teeth perfectly straight and white.

  “That’s the same car Ford showed at the world’s fair that year,” Ruby said. “Garvey’s father saw it in a picture and ordered it the same day. Oh, he was crazy about Garvey. Everyone in this town was....” She tapped the girl in the picture with her finger. “’Course, she broke up with him after he came home crippled.”

  “You know a lot about him,” Lucy said.

  Ruby blushed. “All the girls liked him so much. My cousins, they’re all heartbroken, ’specially because he hardly ever goes into town anymore. He’s still handsome, don’t you think?”

  What Lucy thought was that Ruby had spent a lot of time with the scrapbook. She wondered if Sharon knew. Or if Garvey knew, for that matter. Yes, he was still handsome, but he burned with such anger, it was hard to imagine him being the object of girls’ crushes.

  “I guess it’s nice he has a place to live here.”

  “Oh, yes, his mother took care of that. Mr. Hasty’s been gone, oh, it’s been three or four years now. And by the time Garvey came home, Mrs. Hasty had the cancer. But she did the best she could before she died. She had the apartment added onto the house so Garvey would have a place to live. They had to widen some doors for his chair and so forth—My dad and Hal helped out on the construction. They said...”

  Her voice trailed away and she peeked up at Lucy from under her long, pale eyelashes. “Oh, I don’t know if I should be talking this way. Listen to me, it’s not my business,” she said, but then she turned another page in the book and continued.

  “They said the day the will was read, Mrs. Sloat had a fit, came home and took an ax to the addition. It was all framed out and all—she didn’t do much damage, but she was so angry. See, Mrs. Hasty didn’t tell nobody before she died that she changed the will and left everything to Garvey.”

  “The motel too?” Lucy asked, astonished. “After she built it for Mrs. Sloat?”

  “Motel, the big house, the furniture, all the land, the cars. Everything but the silver and china, because what’s a bachelor going to do with that, after all?”

  “But then...”

  “She put in a special provision. Mr. and Mrs. Sloat get to live in the house their whole lives, and they get a share of the profits from the motel as long as Garvey owns it.”

  “But what if he sells the motel?”

  Ruby rolled her eyes. “And what’s he gonna do then? Live off stuffing those trophies? I think it was smart of Mrs. Hasty, because this way, they all depend on each other. She kept the family together.”

  “But...” Now it was Lucy who lowered her voice. “They seem like they’d as soon never speak to each other.”

  “Oh, but it was way worse before. Now they have to get along.”

  “I guess.” Lucy thought about that first day, the expression on Mrs. Sloat’s face when Garvey cursed her: that cold smile laced with triumph. The two of them, pitted against each other for the rest of their lives... What would their mother think if she could see them now?

  “So,” Ruby said, setting the well-thumbed scrapbook down on the step next to her. “What happened to you?”

  * * *

  Lucy spent Saturday afternoon in her tiny hidden garden. She cleared an area several feet square and began creating a low wall by setting oblong stones into the dirt. As she worked, memories of Reg’s hands on her body warred with thoughts of the long-running battle between Mrs. Sloat and Garvey. This job was supposed to be an escape, a way to put the pain of her mother’s death behind her; instead, she found herself right back in the crossfire of human emotion. Was there nowhere on earth for Lucy to escape, to start a life free of anguish?

  When the sun began to set, she washed her hands under the spigot by the shed and wiped them on her dress. Feeling the coins in her pocket, she took them out and counted; today had netted her another eighty-five cents. Weekends seemed to mean bigger tips. Mrs. Sloat said she was keeping Lucy’s account for her, but Lucy had her doubts. She had no leverage, no way to ensure she was paid for her work. She had to assume it would be up to her to save enough for a fresh start.

  That night in her room she found a loose section of floorboard that could be eased up to reveal a small hole in the wall where the plaster had crumbled away. She put the money there and dreamed of her little stash growing, stacks of shiny coins filling the wall.

  Sunday dawned warm and clear, but her hopes for getting back into her rock garden were dashed when Mrs. Sloat met her on the way back from the motel.

  “Don’t put that cart away yet. It’s high time you got started on Garvey’s room. Here,” she added, pulling a key from her pocket. “Keep this. Now you can go in there anytime you want, and you won’t have to wait for him to get to the door.”

  Lucy pocketed the key wordlessly, afraid that anything she said would provoke Mrs. Sloat.

  She wolfed down the plate of ham and biscuits Ruby made for her, then dragged her cart around the side of the house and up the ramp. When knocking brought no response, she used her key, entering the room cautiously, not surprised to see Garvey working at his desk under the light of a bright Tensor lamp.

  “Who said you could come in here?” he growled, turning his chair around to face her. Today he was wearing a blue plaid shirt with short sleeves that strained around his biceps. His arms were far more muscular than she’d realized, sculpted by the effort of wheeling himself up and down the ramps and over the uneven grounds, the gravel and sunburned sod. He wore pressed canvas trousers, a snowy-white undershirt under his shirt. Someone was keeping his laundry nice. Lucy kept expecting it to show up in her pile, but so far it hadn’t.

  “No one said. But I need to get started on your room. Mrs. Sloat wants it done today.”

  “She can’t tell me what to do in my own house. I don’t want you in my room.”

  Lucy dragged the cart into the room and took the folding step stool from its hook. “I’m just going to start on the walls,” she said as calmly as she could, hoping he wouldn’t see the way her hands were shaking. “You won’t even know I’m here.”

  She set up the ladder in the corner farthest from Garvey’s desk and fetched a rag and the bucket of sudsy water. She had purposely put on her longest dress, the only one that was too big rather than too small, so that it wouldn’t ride up high on her legs as she worked, but she still felt self-conscious as she started on the wall. Her first swipe at the plaster coated the rag with grime, and the water quickly turned black. Water sluiced down her arms and onto her dress, her bod
ice getting uncomfortably damp so that it clung to her body. When she got down off the ladder, she’d only cleaned a couple square feet of the wall.

  Garvey hadn’t budged. He was staring at her unabashedly, his arms crossed over his chest. “They teach you that in that place? How to do the shit work no American’ll touch?”

  I’m American, Lucy thought, but she refused to let him rattle her. “May I please use your sink? If I have to fill this from the hose, it’s going to take me a lot longer.”

  Garvey only snorted, so Lucy emptied the bucket out the front door and crossed in front of Garvey to get to his private quarters, feeling his eyes on her the whole time. His bedroom was spotless, the bed precisely made up with the plaid spread she’d glimpsed that first day. A tall stack of books teetered on his nightstand, and she wished she could read the spines, but she didn’t dare.

  The bathroom had a curious shower attachment and a steel bench; the tiled lip of the shower was only a few inches tall. Lucy caught herself wondering how he got from the chair to the bench and felt her face flame with embarrassment. She filled the bucket and carried it back to the ladder. Still, he stared.

  Lucy couldn’t stand it. “You just going to watch me all day?”

  “If you’re going to come in here against my wishes, disrupt my work, make it impossible for me to concentrate, I guess I’ll do whatever I damn well want.”

  Lucy dipped her rag and started on the wall again. At this rate, it would take all afternoon to get halfway around the room. “Well, I’m not stopping you. If you don’t want to work, I guess that’s your choice.”

  She scrubbed until the water was filthy. This time when she returned with a bucket of fresh water, she paused before climbing the ladder. “If you’re just going to sit there, you could at least talk to me.”

  Garvey laughed bitterly. “About what? Trust me, the only thing you and I have in common is the misfortune of living on this cursed patch of land. You just do your work, think your pathetic little thoughts, and leave me in peace.”