Garden of Stones

by Sophie Littlefield

  Now that you know everything I can teach you, I have nothing more to give....

  “It sounded like he cared about you a lot.”

  “He was like a mentor, I suppose. He was a veteran, he was wounded in the war. Got around in a wheelchair. Wow, that smells good, doesn’t it?”

  Patty wanted to ask more about him, but her mother clearly didn’t want to talk about it and Jay called from the kitchen to ask for help serving the meal.

  It was nearly midnight when they finished dinner, but no one made any move to get up. Talk had circled around Lucy’s childhood, and she’d told stories Patty had never heard, about her school days and visits to her father’s factory, about her mother’s best friend and her cats. Patty felt wistful that she had never been able to coax these stories from her mother as effortlessly as Jay did, but mostly she was fascinated, holding on to every anecdote, every detail.

  “What did you do after the war, Mrs. T?” Jay asked. “Patty says you lived somewhere up in the desert.”

  Lucy set her fork down on her paper plate and dabbed at the corners of her mouth with her napkin.

  “She worked as a maid, I told you that,” Patty said quickly, putting her hand on Jay’s knee, willing him to let the subject go. She didn’t want this remarkable evening to end with unpleasant memories for her mother.

  But Lucy seemed fine. “That’s right, I did. In a motel in Lone Pine, not far from Manzanar. One of the nuns helped me get the job.”

  She looked at Patty and smiled tentatively, holding her gaze as something passed between them: acceptance, forgiveness, permission to let things go.

  “I worked for a family. The work wasn’t too hard, and they had a little taxidermy business on the side. That’s how I learned, in my free time, helping out with the grunt work at first before they let me do my own projects.”

  “And you met Patty’s father there?”

  “Jay,” Patty said sharply.

  “I’m sorry,” Jay said quickly. “It’s none of my business—”

  “No, it’s all right.” Lucy smiled at Jay, taking a sip from her wine. It was the first time Patty remembered her mother having more than one glass. “I did meet him at the motel. He did maintenance on the grounds. It was one of those things, both of us too young to know what we were getting into. Luckily, as soon as she figured out what was going on, the lady I worked for brought me here and took care of me until Patty came. Her name was Mary.” She looked down at her hands. “She changed my life.”

  “Wow, Mrs. T. That must have been tough,” Jay said.

  Patty didn’t want to break the fragile thread of her mother’s recounting, but she had to know.

  “What was his name, Mom? The boy?”

  “Hal,” she said. “His name was Hal.”

  Patty tested the name in her mind. Hal, her father. She waited for some thrill of recognition, some sign that he lived on inside her, that his blood beat in her veins. But she felt nothing.

  “Did you ever see him again after that?” Jay asked. “Do you know what happened to him?”

  “I found out later that he died in a car accident, not long after Patty was born.”

  “Oh, that’s awful, Mrs. T.” Jay covered Patty’s hand with his own. “I’m so sorry.”

  Lucy waved her hand dismissively. “Don’t worry, it was a very long time ago. I was so busy in those days, working and taking care of Patty. She was a good baby, though. Such a good little baby.” Lucy beamed at Jay. “Just think, soon you’ll have kids too. Grandchildren!”

  As Jay and Lucy went on about the future, Patty remembered that earlier in the day, in the police station waiting room, she had thought that the first thing she would do when Lucy was released would be to ask her point-blank if she had gone to Reg’s Gym that morning. If she’d taken his life. Patty had felt she was owed an answer, that she’d earned it.

  Now she was content never to know. Her mother had been caught in life’s crosshairs and she’d survived it all—and made a life for Patty too. Patty was ready to call all her mother’s debts settled.

  Let the future come, she thought. Let it come.

  “I love you, Mother,” she said. Her face flushed—she’d had a little more rosé than she realized. “I love you, Jay.”

  “Okay, okay,” Jay laughed. “How about I let my two best girls get to bed.”

  He kissed Patty in the doorway to her room and she got into bed without undressing. She could hear Jay joking with her mother, saying good-night. She heard him push the chairs back under the kitchen table and stack the dishes in the sink. Finally, she heard the front door close, and the house was silent, and she stretched deliciously and let sleep take her.

  36

  San Francisco

  Saturday, June 17, 1978

  Lucy pulled up to her house as the last rays of the sun pierced the clouds over the rooftops, landing in untended lots and lush gardens and the row of carefully chosen stones lining her front walk. The setting sun turned them pale gold. On warm days the stones baked in the surrounding earth. In spring they glistened wet and gray like the bodies of the sea lions down at the pier.

  Lucy was anxious to get out of her high heels and girdle, and the polyester dress, the tag of which had been itching her neck since ten o’clock this morning when the photographer arrived.

  All the discomfort was worth it, though. Patty had been a beautiful bride, unexpectedly graceful in her confection of a dress, her hair in curving waves around her face, a thin sequined band holding back her bangs. She rarely let go of Jay’s arm, and the two of them never stopped smiling. They were happy. Truly happy, and Lucy had spent the day swept up in their delight and love.

  As she watched Patty dance with Jay on the candlelit dance floor, Lucy had thought about the first hours of Patty’s life. Lucy had waited alone in the chilly halls of Saint Francis Hospital while Mary recovered from childbirth. Lucy listened to the screams echoing up and down the tiled halls, and finally, exhausted by the waiting, took a walk to the viewing window. There, in neat rows of bassinets, were the newest babies fate had seen fit to toss onto the unwelcoming shores of this life. On either side of Lucy, two new fathers regarded their babies with what seemed like equal parts terror and pride.

  She scanned the white cards until she found the one: Baby Girl Sloat. There. The little bundle shifted, a tiny arm stretching and a sweet mouth opening in a yawn below a shock of inky, untamed hair, and Lucy fell in love. In the passing of a single second, she realized she could never allow Mary’s daughter to be given over to the orphanage, where her mixed race would ensure that she was never adopted.

  “I will save you,” she mouthed silently. She watched the baby sleep for a while, her promise taking shape in her mind, the life she would create for them both.

  * * *

  Several months earlier, Mary had come to Lucy while she was cleaning room four. “I want to talk to you about something,” she said, locking the door behind her.

  Lucy had been on her knees, dusting the baseboards. She got to her feet, smoothing the wrinkles from her dress. They looked at each other for a moment. Then Mary extended one clenched fist and uncurled her fingers one by one, revealing every dollar that Lucy had managed to save.

  “You picked a good hiding place,” Mary said. “Just not good enough.”

  Lucy could have her money back, three times over—enough for a bus ticket and a few months’ rent—and all she had to do was go with Mary to a place she had he
ard about, where they could wait until the baby came. Mr. Dang would never know. Leo would never know. Everyone in Lone Pine, including Garvey, would think that Lucy was off bearing his bastard child, and when Mary returned to town, she would take up where she’d left off—and hire a new maid.

  The baby would be placed in an orphanage, Lucy would be free to start a new life in the city, and if all the residents of a dusty desert purgatory figured they knew the story, and only got the characters wrong, what would it matter? Lucy’s future wasn’t in Lone Pine.

  “I won’t do it,” Lucy had said, horrified. “I won’t have him thinking...that.”

  “Oh, Lucy,” Mary said with cruel amusement. “You went and fell in love, didn’t you? I suppose I should have seen it coming—the two of you, it’s sort of sweet.”

  She smoothed the stack of bills she held in her hand and tucked them into her purse. “Of course...there aren’t a whole lot of places a girl like you can go with no money and no job.”

  Would she really do something so heartless? Lucy wondered. “I’ll call Sister Jeanne,” she said uncertainly.

  Mary snorted. “Good luck, then. You know they’re sending all the orphans back where they came from. Poor Sister Jeanne has her hands full, I’m sure. Why, I bet she doesn’t even know where she’s going to go when this is all over.”

  Lucy felt sick. She’d been cornered, outfoxed, and neither of them had even mentioned the worst possibility of all.

  “I could tell Garvey,” she whispered.

  “Yes, I suppose you could. Let’s think about that for a moment, shall we? No doubt Garvey would tell Leo right away, and Leo would have no choice but to divorce me. The judge would dissolve the family trust, make us sell off the assets. He’d give Leo the lion’s share. Oh, I’d do all right, I suppose.... I’d have a little cash to start over. I’d have to get a job. I could be a maid, like you. Wouldn’t that be amusing?”

  She laughed and then her nostrils flared and she glared at Lucy. “But Garvey? That’s another matter. The motel would be gone—he’d have to watch someone else run it, on the land that once belonged to him. I suppose he could rent out rooms in town, try to keep his taxidermy business going. But without you...do you think his heart would really be in it? Or wait—were you thinking he would actually take you with him? Marry you, perhaps? Oh—that would be one for the history books, wouldn’t it?” She laughed again, the sound chilling and mean. “I’m sorry, Lucy, I’m just trying to picture that wedding announcement. The photo of the happy couple. You...you could sit on his lap, wearing a white dress, while he wheeled you up over your new doorstep, into the pathetic single room that you’d have to share with all your little animals. Only...”

  She twisted her mouth in mock dismay. “I don’t suppose you’ve ever had a chance to look at the Mountainview’s books, have you, Lucy? No, of course not. Well, it may come as a harsh surprise to you to know that the income Garvey generates wouldn’t even pay the light bill here. He fancies himself an artist, I know, but art doesn’t put food on the table. He can stuff those carcasses all day long, and he still wouldn’t be able to support the two of you.”

  Mary rubbed her hand over her barely swollen stomach. “So when you think it through the way I have, I think you’ll have to agree that the very best thing for all of us is to get through this together and then part ways as friends.”

  She lingered over the word friends and reached for Lucy’s hand, giving it a quick, hard squeeze before unlocking the door and leaving. Lucy stayed in room four for a long time, trying to find a way out of Mary’s scheme.

  If Mary had been a different woman, Lucy might not have begrudged her those stolen hours with Mr. Dang. Two lonely people; they’d both known their share of cruelty. Maybe it was the sting of being unwanted, being reviled, that brought Mary and Mr. Dang together. Maybe they found a little pleasure; maybe it was only commiseration. Lucy didn’t know and she didn’t care. If Mary hadn’t been born lacking compassion, life had scoured it away and filled the hole with bile, until she could only be happy when others suffered.

  And this time she had found a way to make sure they suffered spectacularly.

  She had won. Garvey could never know the truth, because the truth would break the fragile balance of his life. Lucy felt her legs go weak as she realized what she had to do, and held on to the handle of her supply cart for support. She would go along with Mary’s plan, she would walk away from this place and the man she loved and she would never look back.

  She would do it for Garvey, and if it broke his heart, at least hers would have broken first.

  * * *

  As the garage door rolled up, Lucy noticed a figure standing motionless outside her front door. She pulled in slowly, turned off the car, sat for a moment. She scratched at her waist, where the band of her panty hose cut cruelly into the soft flesh of her stomach, and thought about what to do next.

  There were only a few people she could think of who would come to see her on an evening like this—or any evening at all, really—and two of them were on their way to the Saint Francis hotel to start their lives together as a married couple.

  “Jessie,” she said as she approached the door, her heart pounding under the pink lace of her dress. How many times had she imagined this moment, the first time she lay eyes on him after all those years? He was different, with the thickset body of a middle-aged man, silver in his hair, an expensive shirt and gold watch. But he was the same too, around the eyes, the shy smile. “What are you doing here?”

  “I was in town for work, but I decided to stay an extra day. I was hoping to see you in person.”

  “You saw me in person,” she said. “Didn’t you? That morning at the DeSoto.”

  “But you didn’t see me. You were only a few minutes behind me, Lucy. I’d made it all the way up the stairs to the lobby when I realized I didn’t have the stunner with me. I dropped it after I shot Reg. I was going to go back when I saw you coming through the revolving door and I panicked.”

  “Why did you have to tell me you were going to do it? Why’d you ever call me, Jessie?” she asked. “Were you hoping I’d stop you?”

  “No, no. I’d never put that on you, Lucy. I’m so sorry I involved you at all. I should have waited until after it was done. I just...” His eyes grew shiny, and he brushed at them impatiently and cleared his throat. “I just wanted to hear your voice first, I guess. You could always make me feel like everything was going to be all right. Even then. Even after I told you I was going to see him, you made me feel like it would all be okay.”

  “You hung up on me,” Lucy said, aching to think of him in some hotel room, alone, deciding to do this thing. Reliving all the hurt and all the shame for the hundredth time, the thousandth, the millionth, and deciding that he would finally end it.

  “Only because I knew you’d try to talk me out of it.”

  “I would have.” Not because killing was wrong, but because it was a risk; he was gambling everything, whatever was left of his life. And what guarantee was there that in taking Forrest’s life, he could extinguish the pain? Lucy looked at his face, searching for proof that he’d succeeded. “Are you all right?”

  “Yes. I am. I really am.” He touched her arm lightly. “But what about you? Lucy, when I think of what I put you through...that you saw what I did. Saw him.”

  For a moment, Lucy felt it all again, the shock, the regret, the fear. Forrest had been slumped in his chair, blood cascading down his face, his mouth slack.
He looked nothing like he did back then. He’d looked so old. Staring at his still body, his gut hanging over his pants, his feet splayed in their dirty white sneakers, the cramped room smelling of sweat and feces, Lucy almost felt pity for him.

  It had been nothing like the night at Rickenbocker’s room. Then, she’d felt like Nancy Drew, stealing along the back of the staff buildings, stealthy, with her mother’s scarf wrapped around her hair. She saw the way he looked at her when he opened the door, his eyebrows raised in surprise, his smile hungry. She moved fast, carried by the momentum that took her through the door. She brought her mittened hand up and aimed well, her mother’s good scissors heavy in her hand. And when it was done, when Rickenbocker sunk to his knees, clutching his neck and staring at her with his eyes bulging, she felt no pity at all.

  He had swayed on his knees for a moment before falling sideways. It wasn’t long before he was still. Blood made a puddle under his cheek. His eyes were open, but they seemed to look past her, as though he’d figured out her ruse and was searching for the real Miyako. He’d never touch her again, though; Lucy had made sure of that, and as she let herself back out into the freezing night, she felt no regret, only satisfaction.

  She’d been young, too young to understand how it might play out. Miyako had known, though. She knew they’d come for her, and she knew they’d come for Lucy next. It would never end, and Lucy realized that her mother had done everything she could to save her...even if it meant causing her pain.

  Rickenbocker’s death had been for Miyako, and maybe that was why it never haunted Lucy, why she never regretted it.

  “It’s all right,” she told Jessie, and she believed it. Forrest had hurt Jessie; now he was dead. It was not her place to forgive either of them, but maybe she could offer something else, the words she’d tried to live by herself. “Just look ahead now. The future is all that matters.”