The Garden of Happy Endings

by Barbara O'Neal

  “I seriously doubt it, Elsa. That’s why I’m calling. Just thought you should know.”

  “Thank you, David.” She paused, thinking. About her yearning for her congregation, for Sunday mornings. She had not wanted to leave in the first place. Maybe it was time to—

  Behind her, Tamsin clattered pans and dishes, the homey sound of dinner preparation. “There are some complicating factors here,” she said quietly. “Do you follow the financial news?”

  “Some.”

  She told him about the Ponzi scheme and Tamsin’s connection. “She’s staying with me. I don’t think I can leave her for at least a month.” Worry moved through her belly. “But if Reverend Tall Pine gets into that church—”

  “Exactly.”

  Elsa nodded. “Thank you again for letting me know, David. I’m sorry for your injury, and I’m deeply grateful for everything you’ve done.”

  “I understand.”

  “How are they? The congregation?”

  “They miss you, of course, but we’re hobbling along all right.” He chuckled at his joke. “I’ve encouraged them to write to you, to let you know they’re thinking about you.”

  “I got an email this morning. It was beautiful.”

  “I’m glad. You do good work. Don’t forget that. Will you let me pray for you?”

  “Of course.” She stared into space, letting him offer a prayer on her behalf, a prayer for clarity and guidance and truth. She steeled herself against it, but prayers could still get to her. She found it seeping into the back of her brain, easing something along her neck, urging her to close her eyes. A soft buzzing peace, wide as an ocean, filled her for a fleeting moment. Enough for today. “Thank you.”

  “God is always there, Elsa.”

  She thought of Kiki, looking skyward for help, which had never arrived. “I do want to believe that,” she said, and left it there.

  Tamsin hummed under her breath as she cooked. She was surprised that she wasn’t tired of food after handling it all day, but she felt even more pleasure in it, not less. Charlie watched her from the doorway, his feet just touching the threshold he was not allowed to cross if someone was cooking. She was charmed by his focus and the sense of companionship he offered—she’d never had a dog before and had never even known she liked them until Elsa owned her first one. “Stick with me,” she said to him now. “I’ll see to it that you get a treat or two.”

  The first step was a pot of rice steaming on a back burner. At home she liked using a wild rice mix, but this was ordinary long-grain white. Traditional. Once that was bubbling, she washed a single plump chicken breast and cut it lengthwise into narrow, even pieces that would cook quickly. One strip she cut into smaller pieces for Charlie, who took a tidbit from her fingers with the most delicate of mouths, his tongue clever and not at all slobbery. She sliced long thin strips of red pepper and slivered a small yellow onion and then opened a hideously expensive carton of grape tomatoes. Elsa indulged in her passion for tomatoes the way Tamsin indulged in wine; her sister didn’t care if they were expensive, they were necessary to her happiness and she’d give up a lot to keep them.

  Tamsin halved the small red fruits, thinking of the yellow cherry tomatoes she’d grown last summer in a pot on her patio. She had called them her grenade tomatoes, so explosively full of flavor that even a handful overpowered a salad. She’d grown lavender in big pots, too, so their leaves would fill the night air with scent. Often she and Scott had sat out there in the evenings and sipped wine, listening to the whirring softness of crickets and the tick of sprinklers watering the grass. Her own grass was lush and thick, cared for by a lawn company Scott had hired, and it gave off a damp coolness that offset the dry Colorado air. In the summer dark they would talk, about politics and the stock market and Alexa, about where they hoped to next travel and what they would do on the weekend.

  Ordinary, all of it.

  Gone.

  Her lungs pinched hard enough that she had to cough, like an old lady, to get air. No wallowing. She picked up the remote control from the counter and turned on the small, blocky television that sat on top of the fridge. She would watch the news.

  At home, she had a wok, a beautifully shaped thing like a Chinese field hat, but here she made do with an enormous cast-iron skillet, letting it get very hot before she measured in vegetable oil that would tolerate high heat. When it was not quite smoking, she poured the mixed vegetables and meat into the pan, sprinkled them with salt and pepper and some ginger that she’d found in the cupboard. She stirred it all together, letting the flavors blend and add to one another, sending up a cloud of fragrant steam. It was the simplest of dishes, rice and chicken and vegetables, but so very nutritious, something she used to make once a week. Alexa loved it.

  Elsa came into the kitchen. “Mmm! That smells wonderful. I’m starving.”

  “Set the table. It’ll be ready in just a minute or two.” She focused on turning, stirring, making sure everything touched the oil and the heat and the spices but never long enough to scorch. The chicken browned lightly, and she pulled the pan off the burner, still stirring. Elsa put out the plates and silverware, filled tall glasses with ice. Tamsin lifted the lid to the rice, seeing the small holes and dry surface that meant it was properly cooked. “You can put the rice in a bowl,” Tamsin said, and poured the stir-fry into another bowl, which she carried to the table.

  Elsa brought the rice, steaming and mounded into a slightly off-color china serving dish with a border of blue flowers and gold piping. The television played in the kitchen. “Do you mind if I turn that off?” Elsa asked.

  “No, I just turned it on as a distraction.”

  “From?”

  Tamsin waved a hand. “Things. My backyard.”

  Elsa smiled gently. One of the best things Tamsin liked about her sister was that gentle, understanding smile. It lit her eyes, made her look like a pixie with that tumble of black curls.

  “Right.”

  Tamsin dished out rice for both of them, finding she was beginning to like the mismatched dishes. Elsa had a cobalt plate with a flower in the center. Tamsin’s was ivory with a winding vine. Her fork was a heavy ornate thing, her knife a slim elegant blade. She picked it up and stabbed the air playfully, and then felt Elsa’s presence again, standing motionless at the threshold of the kitchen.

  “You need to see this.”

  Tamsin jumped up and joined her, and there on the screen of the national news was her face from this morning, scrubbed and tired-looking as she walked to the church. The anchor said, “No news yet on the whereabouts of Scott Corsi, who is wanted for questioning in the scheme that some investigators say may have cost investors over three hundred million dollars.”

  “Wait. Three hundred million?” Tamsin said. “I’ve had a very nice life, but I never saw anything like that kind of money.”

  “It might be exaggerated, though he might have hidden a lot of it, too. Or done any number of things.”

  Tamsin thought of Scott at the crap tables in Vegas, at poker games in Argentina. “Or gambled it all away.”

  “Does he gamble?”

  “I’d say this is all a big gamble, wouldn’t you? He bet that it would work out before he got caught, and it didn’t.” She swallowed, feeling a knot of truth in her throat. “Yes,” she said. “He gambled. Sometimes it scared me. That’s one of the reasons he liked traveling so much—he had a bunch of rich guys he liked to play cards with. Poker.”

  Elsa nodded. Took her sister’s arm gently. “Let’s eat. I don’t want it to get cold.”

  They returned to the table, but the bubble of forgetfulness had broken, and Tamsin looked at the table with despair. “I wish I’d figured it out sooner.”

  “Eat,” Elsa said, dishing stir-fry onto her plate. The vegetables and chicken spilled perfectly over the rice. It did look pretty. Tamsin picked up her fork. “At home, I would have added toasted sesame seeds. They’re really tasty.”

  “It’s fantastic just the wa
y it is, Tamsin. No one ever cooks for me, you know, not an ordinary meal in my own home. I love it that you’re doing that here.”

  “You’re welcome. I’ve missed being able to cook for other people, with Alexa gone and Scott on the road so much.” She took a bite, and took the time to really taste it. The peppers. The onions. The rice. The subtle touch of ginger. “Good.”

  She let the food nourish her. Light tumbled in through the windows, carrying the lemon glaze of spring. She wished she could appreciate it, wished that she was planning her garden, not couched here at her sister’s house, lonely and afraid. If she started to think about her future, it was so chaotic and overwhelming that she started to feel sick to her stomach.

  “I don’t even know what steps to take, Elsa, to the next part of my life. I feel like I’m in an airplane, circling the earth. What do I do?”

  Elsa put down her fork and touched her lips with her napkin. “Maybe the first step should be getting a job. It will help you feel grounded. And maybe they’ll let you into the house soon, too. Didn’t they say maybe this weekend?”

  Tamsin nodded. “I’d like to get some kitchen stuff. Will they let me get my wok, do you think?”

  “I can’t see why not.” Elsa lifted a pepper to her mouth, ate it delicately. “You also need to tell Alexa what’s going on, Tamsin. The world is a very small place. What if she sees it on the news or something? She’ll be devastated.”

  Tamsin closed her eyes, tried to imagine that phone call. “I don’t even know what to say. ‘Alexa, I have bad news. Your dad turned out to be a crook. And oh, by the way, the house you’ve lived in all your life now belongs to some government process.’ What do you think of that?”

  “I know it will be hard to say, but you’re a good mother and you’ll find some way of breaking it to her that’s not so bald. How much worse will it be for her if she finds out some other way?”

  Tamsin took a breath. “I’ll think about how to tell her and call her in the morning.”

  “The sooner the better.”

  “It’s the middle of the night there right now.”

  “Tomorrow, then.” Elsa pointed. “Now, eat your dinner. And thank you for cooking.”

  It was well past midnight in Madrid but Alexa was not asleep. She and Carlos had been out with friends, eating dinner and watching a small band play mediocre pop music. The only reason the band landed gigs, Carlos whispered to her, was because the woman was so beautiful. And well endowed.

  “Is that so?” she asked, leaning into him.

  “Not so beautiful as you, of course,” he said, laughing. It was the thing she liked the most about him, that he was so full of laughter. He made her laugh, and she tended to be very serious. A serious student, a serious person. She had just been born that way. They had pictures of her as a baby, not giggling like other babies, but staring with curious intent at the camera, her eyes too big for her face.

  He kissed her neck, right at the nape, knowing that it made her shiver, and she slapped at his hands. “Later,” she whispered, and nipped his earlobe, which was the thing that made him crazy.

  And so they had come back to her tiny apartment with its big windows and made love. Now they were lying in a tangle of sheets in the warm night, legs flung out, sharing a cigarette. One of the many habits she would have to change when she headed home next month.

  “I cannot bear the thought of you leaving,” Carlos said. Her head was cradled on his chest, and she blew out smoke and handed the cigarette back to him. “How long will it be before we can be together again?”

  “I have the apartment now. It will be all right.”

  He kissed the top of her head. “It won’t be the same. You’ll grow apart from me and some other man will catch your eye and then Carlos will be a poof of smoke.”

  She laughed, lifting her head to kiss his chin. “No other man on this earth could hold a candle to you.” She tucked her cheek into his shoulder, brushing her hand over the black hair on his chest. “Far more likely that you will forget all about your little American fling and find yourself a nice countess and settle into the life you were meant to live.”

  “Never say that!” He gathered a fistful of her hair and kissed it, tugging her face up to his, so he could kiss her mouth. “I love you. I love you. I love you. Do you hear me?”

  She closed her eyes. “Yes,” she whispered.

  He kissed her again, and again. “I love you,” he chanted. “You love me, too. We will find a way to be together, I promise.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  On Friday morning, Deacon got his men working on the two big landscape jobs they had in motion, and then headed for the church. This week, he’d brought in a tractor and spread truckloads of topsoil. The volunteers had finished laying irrigation tubing.

  Tomorrow was the official blessing of the fields, and the potluck supper they’d share together, and then the planting would begin. Officially, anyway. Many of the residents of the apartment houses had to wait for their SNAP funds on the first to buy seed.

  Pulling up in the bright morning, he felt a deep sense of satisfaction. Nothing had felt this good to him in a couple thousand years. As he stepped out into the field, slamming the door behind him, his phone rang in his pocket, and he tugged it out, expecting one of the crews to have questions.

  Instead, it was his ex-wife’s name on the screen. “Hello, Lucinda,” he said, perplexed. “Is everything all right?”

  “Fine, fine. Nothing to worry about. I just need to talk to you about something. It’s a little delicate. Are you able to talk?”

  “Yeah, sure. What’s going on?”

  She paused. “Deacon, I’m sorry, but you need to stop writing letters to Jenny.”

  He held the phone to his ear, thinking of his sixteen-year-old daughter, whom he had not seen since she was eight. He wrote letters to her about once a month, just to stay in touch, which he’d started doing when he was in prison, grappling with the enormity of his sins. He didn’t burden her with any of that, of course, just sent chatty, sometimes thoughtful letters that he wrote by hand. Reaching out. “I see.” He cleared his throat. “That coming from you or her?”

  “It’s her. I know you’re trying to make amends, but she isn’t interested.”

  “I see,” he repeated. “Is that … ever?”

  “Deacon, I can tell you’ve got your life together now, but some things aren’t fixable. She doesn’t want to know you. She has a father.”

  “Stepfather.”

  “Father,” she said, more emphatically. “We’ve been married for half her life.”

  Standing in the gravelike silence of the field, he croaked, “Right.”

  “Isn’t there something in the AA principles about making amends unless it makes things worse?”

  “Yep.”

  “You can’t fix this. She’s not interested, and I think you have to leave her alone. Maybe someday, when she grows up and has kids of her own …”

  He swallowed. “Good enough. I won’t write to her again.”

  “Thank you. I hope you won’t take it too hard.”

  “Don’t worry I’m not going on a bender anytime soon.”

  “That’s not what I meant.”

  “I know, Lucinda. It’s fine. I’m going to go now. You take care of yourself, all right? Give her a kiss from me, even if she doesn’t know who it’s from.”

  “I can do that.”

  He ended the connection and held the phone, bending his head blindly. “Damn it.”

  “You all right, Deacon?” said a voice. Father Jack.

  “Yeah,” he said, but tears welled in his throat, hot and dangerous.

  The priest stood there patiently, wearing his black shirt and white collar, a pair of jeans and tennis shoes. “You don’t really look all right.”

  Deacon toed a weed, his hands on his hips. “No,” he amended. “But I will be.”

  “Do you want to talk about it?”

  Deacon considered. A hole had opened
up in his chest, sucking goodness and holiness and light into it, and he knew from long experience that was never a good place to be. Better to talk than try to wrestle the demon into submission on his own. “It’s my daughter,” he said. “Her mother just asked me to stop writing to her.” His voice all but broke on the last syllable, and he looked over the fields, blinking, until his emotions subsided.

  “How old is she?”

  “Sixteen. Her mother divorced me when she was seven. I don’t blame her. She’d put up with me binge drinking for thirteen years, and just finally had enough.” Again that heat in his throat. Too much. “God damn it.”

  Father Jack waited. “Have faith, Deacon. In time, she might come around.”

  Deacon cleared his throat. “I reckon.” Rubbing his jaw, struggling to hang on to his dignity, he croaked out, “I can’t talk about it right now.”

  “It’s all right. You know where I am if you change your mind.”

  “Thank you.” He dropped the phone into his pocket. “What’s on your mind, Father?”

  Father Jack paused, and Deacon felt the priest’s eyes on him. After a long moment, he said, “Couple of things. I’ve been wondering if we need to have an instructional class or two. Talk about the various crops and what they do, so people can make good choices. Maybe something on companion planting?”

  “Elsa has organized a group of experts to volunteer here a few afternoons a week, and I’ve printed up some packets to pass out, with particular instructions for various crops, tomatoes and corn and whatnot.”

  “Good. I like that. What happened with the chickens?”

  “Probably isn’t a good place for them. Too many coyotes coming up the river. We might be able to find some ways to build good coops over time, in a year or two, but that’s beyond the little budget we’ve got right now.”

  “Understood. It was worth a try.”

  Deacon narrowed his eyes, imagining the coops, the chicken yard, the valuable lessons they would provide for the children—and even the adults—on the source of food. “All in good time.”