The Ladies of Garrison Gardens

by Louise Shaffer

  But of course, most people would say she hadn't. Most people would say she was one of the luckiest women alive. Because of the way Peggy had “fixed” everything for her.

  Chapter Six

  MRS. RAIN

  2004

  THE BACK ISSUES of the Atlanta Constitution weren't any more satisfactory than the Charles Valley Gazette had been. A quick skimming of six weeks' worth of Sunday papers yielded not one single mention of Peggy Garrison. There was nothing left for Mrs. Rain to do but go through the obituaries, a gloomy prospect and definitely tiring to ninety-year-old eyes. She hit pay dirt in the second newspaper in the stack, but her triumph was short lived. Of the three columns devoted to Peggy, almost all of it was blather about the great man who had been her husband. It would have been funny if it hadn't been so typical. Dalton Garrison was never worthy of either of the women who married him, but there he was, downstage center in Peggy's obituary, hogging the spotlight. The damn thing had probably been written by one of the PR people who worked for the resort and the gardens.

  Finally, in the very last paragraph, Peggy was mentioned in her own right. She was a beloved figure in Charles Valley who would be missed, said the Constitution, as if delivering hot news. Then it added that the late Mrs. Garrison's place on the board at the Garrison Gardens Charitable Trust would be taken by Laurel Selene McCready, who was also the new owner of the Garrison resort complex. That was news—big, strange, exciting news! Maybe the old connection to Charles Valley wasn't broken after all. Or if it was, maybe there was a new connection to be made. Suddenly, creaky joints and failing eyes didn't seem to matter.

  Essie had planted a new walkie-talkie thing by the side of her bed next to the natural-light lamp. Mrs. Rain wasted several valuable minutes trying to work it, then gave up and called out in the voice that could once hit the back wall of a 1,500-seat theater, “Cherry, I want you!” She was pulling herself out of bed, as Cherry raced into the room.

  “What's wrong?” the girl panted anxiously.

  “I'm not dying, dear, I just need to get dressed. And I want you to brush out that bird's nest at the back of my head.” She always thought better when her hair was brushed. And now she needed to think. She wanted to find out everything she could about Ms. McCready.

  Chapter Seven

  LAUREL

  2004

  LAUREL TURNED ONTO Highway 22 heading north toward I-85 and Atlanta, for no reason except it was the opposite direction from Charles Valley. She floored the gas pedal, and a Volvo station wagon with a mommy and two kids in it whizzed past her, which had to be a new low for the Camaro. Just once she wanted to fly down the highway at the speed of traffic. Or better yet, she'd like to outrun everything on the damn road. She floored the gas pedal again. But she was going up a hill—not the Camaro's best event—so the speedometer didn't even waver.

  When Peggy's lawyer dropped the bombshell and told her she was Peggy's heir, Laurel's first thought was that someone should have warned her. Then she realized that Peggy had, in her own way. A week after Peggy's tests at Emory—when, as far as Laurel knew, she was still waiting for the results—she'd invited Laurel to have supper at the Magnolia Room. This was unusual. Peggy might make use of the Garrison family perks in her own home, but she kept a low profile around the resort. But that night Peggy had seemed so insistent that Laurel was sure she had good news.

  Laurel had left the Gazette, even though it was a Thursday, the night when she and Hank put the paper to bed, and raced over to the Magnolia Room. She'd sat across the table from Peggy, waiting for her to say they were celebrating because it wasn't cancer, after all. The doctors were wrong, Peggy was going to say, it was a false alarm.

  But Peggy wasn't following the script. “What do you think about this place?” she asked, after a moment.

  “I understand the food is good,” said Laurel cautiously.

  “I meant, what do you think of all of it? Garrison Gardens? The resort?”

  This was another first. Peggy never talked about anything Garrison, which was a blessing, given Laurel's feelings on the subject. Now Laurel measured her words carefully. “If the gardens and the resort weren't here, a lot of people wouldn't have jobs,” she said.

  “That's not what I asked.”

  Candlelight from the table flickered over Peggy's face, outlining hollows and jutting bones that had never been there before. Her eyes were tired.

  How did she get so thin? Laurel thought. How did I miss seeing it? That was when she knew the news was not going to be good.

  She wanted to say whatever would make Peggy happy. “The gardens do a lot of good,” she said. “Everyone would miss them if they weren't here.”

  Peggy nodded and opened her menu. Then she shut it. “I've made a lot of bargains, Laurel. And a lot of mistakes. I've done my best, but I could have done a lot better.”

  “We all could,” Laurel said, knowing something awful was coming and trying to brace for it.

  “I'm not apologizing,” Peggy went on. “I wanted money, and I've had it. I'm proud of some of the things I've done with it.” She eyed Laurel thoughtfully. “But I don't want to mess up now.”

  Because she couldn't stand the suspense even more than she didn't want to hear the bad news, Laurel said, “Peggy, please tell me what you're talking about.”

  That was when Peggy drew a deep breath and said what Laurel already knew, that the preliminary cancer diagnosis was confirmed.

  Laurel made all the usual noises about how Peggy could beat it. And Peggy agreed that, yes, of course she could. But her eyes said differently and so did her voice.

  Suddenly, as she sat across from Peggy with the candles on the table flickering, Laurel remembered being in her first semester of college at Jackson State, when her mother Sara Jayne called. Laurel could hear the panic in her ma's voice as she said, “I've been feeling like shit for almost a year now, not that you'd ever notice, college girl.”

  Remembering her mother's phone call, Laurel wanted to run. She wanted to get away from the Magnolia Room and Peggy and everything she knew was coming in the months ahead.

  I can't be there for you, Peggy, she wanted to say. I've been through it once, and I can't do it again.

  But then Peggy said, “Would you mind if we got the hell out of here? I'm not hungry.” So they left.

  Peggy insisted that she wanted to go home and swore she didn't mind being alone. Laurel watched her drive off and then she went to the Sportsman's Grill to see Denny before going back to the newspaper. But Denny was off with Jennifer and her mother, planning seating arrangements or some such crap, so she had a beer—which turned into many beers.

  Maybe that was the reason she did what she did next. Or maybe she wanted to give Peggy the answer she'd been too chicken to give her at the restaurant. If Denny had been at the bar, he might have seen that something was wrong and stopped her. But she finished her beers, went back to the newspaper, and told Hank she'd finish laying out the paper if he wanted the rest of the night off.

  After he was gone, she went out to her car and brought in the six-pack of Bud she'd picked up at Brown's Convenience Store, put Patsy Cline on her portable CD player, and, when she had a nice mix of pissed-off and righteousness going, wrote a slightly meandering but comprehensive editorial about everything that was wrong with Garrison Gardens and had been since it came into being. By the time she finished writing her opus and redoing the layout, it was nearly morning. She drove home, wondering if Hank would bother to read her work before he printed.

  She found out later that the guy who made the deliveries was the one who noticed there was a piece by Laurel Selene McCready on the editorial page—something that had never happened before—and alerted Hank. Otherwise the Gazette would have broken a decades-long tradition of kissing up to the Garrisons and run the most scathing commentary on the town's cash cow that had ever seen print.

  Hank didn't even bother to fire her in person. He left a message on her answering machine.

  Th
ree days later, Laurel had presented herself at Peggy's door and said, “Let me help you.”

  “When I need you, I will,” Peggy had said.

  “Promise.”

  “I promise,” Peggy had said. Then, as Laurel turned to go, “And you promise me something, Laurel Selene. No matter what happens . . . afterward, I mean . . . remember to have fun. I never had enough fun.”

  At the time she couldn't figure out what Peggy meant. Now she knew it had been a warning.

  There was a stoplight ahead and Laurel realized that while she'd been wandering down memory lane, she'd reached the junction where I-85 cut into Highway 22. The road, which had been uncluttered up to that point, suddenly turned into a stretch of strip malls, fast-food places, car dealerships, discount shopping clubs, motels, and a Wal-Mart the size of a small town. If the state of Georgia ever gave out an Ugly Road Award, this part of Highway 22 would be a contender. It went along with her mood—which was getting uglier by the minute. And trying to tell herself how grateful she should be just made it worse. Because it was real sweet of Peggy to say have fun. “But how the hell do I do it?” she asked the air—or maybe the absent Peggy.

  “Here's what I've got, Peggy,” she said, abandoning the pretense that she wasn't talking to a dead person, “I've got lawyers. I've got a bunch of people, including me, who don't think I should have any of what you've given me. And I've got the house that was your personal jail for forty-five years. How do I find the goddamned fun in that? Do I go buy things? When you've been broke all your life, you train yourself not to spend money. I don't even know what to want—”

  Then, without warning, she did. Right there in front of her was something she wanted so bad she could taste it. It was a car. But this wasn't just any vehicle, it was wide and low and built to move, what Denny used to call a mean machine. It sat on a platform high above all the other cars at the Dodge dealership across the highway. She must have seen it before, the way you see Hollywood mansions or pricey getaways on television commercials, but they never really register because they are so far out of reach. But now the car was beckoning to Laurel from four lanes over. She crossed the highway and hauled butt into the dealership parking lot.

  “It's the new Viper,” the salesman said. “We keep it up there for display purposes.”

  “But it is for sale, right?”

  “Uh-huh,” he said doubtfully, “but that's a lot of car. It isn't what I'd show to a girl—”

  “Show it to this one.” There was no need to explain that she'd learned to drive by tearing around town in the 1970 'Cuda that Denny had souped up when they were teenagers.

  “It's stick shift. Six to the floor.”

  “Okay. How much?”

  “I've never sold one. I don't even know if it comes in any color except red.”

  “Red is fine. I'm real fond of red.”

  “You want to buy that one? Right now?” She nodded. If he made her wait she'd lose her nerve. He stole a look at her Camaro parked outside the showroom. “I can't give you any kind of trade-in on that thing.”

  “I'm not asking for one.”

  “That Viper is an eighty-five-thousand-dollar car. Plus tax.”

  “I'll write you a check,” she said, trying to sound as if she tossed around eighty-five-thousand bucks plus tax every day of the week. To her ear she pulled it off rather well.

  So naturally, when it came time to actually sign the check, her teeth began to chatter. Which was what happened when she was doing something insane and she was still rational enough to know it. She was about to go into full castanets mode, but by then the salesman—who had insisted on checking with her bank to make sure she could cover the check—was smiling at her, and the guys on the lot had brought the Viper down off its platform and it was sitting right outside the showroom window, and it seemed to be grinning at her too. So she clenched her shaking jaw, wrote her name, took the car keys, and, waiting for she didn't know what retribution from God, walked out to claim her property.

  On the inside the Viper was a spare two-seater, frills like leg room had been sacrificed for engine space. Any passenger who was over six feet tall was going to ride with his knees under his chin. Laurel had to climb in left foot first, and swing in over the seat, which made her feel like Tom Selleck in Magnum PI. Then she turned on the ignition.

  She'd forgotten what it felt like to have a beast like this under you. The engine roared to life, straining to take off, and she alone could unleash it. She shifted gears and felt the power surge. The urge to find out what her new sweetheart could do was overwhelming, but Laurel kept the leash on until she reached a deserted back road behind the car lot that the salesman had pointed out to her. Then, finally, she mashed on the gas pedal. In seconds the wind was whipping her hair and burning her eyes as the Viper gobbled road. She pressed harder; the car roared and sped ahead. She could lose control and flip over going so fast, but that was why God made cars like this, for the danger and the rush.

  The road had looped around and now she was heading back to the highway. A stop sign was coming up and, good citizen that she was, she pulled back on the gas and drove demurely up to it. But then three teenage guys in a pickup, riding high off the ground on monster wheels, pulled up beside her. The kid riding shotgun—cute, she noted—looked down on her and grinned a challenge. There was a traffic light at the end of the road where it met the highway. She pointed to the light and held out five fingers. The kid nodded and they peeled out.

  The race wasn't even close. The boy behind the wheel did his best, but the monster truck wasn't in the same league as her monster. She waited for the boys at the traffic light, holding out her hand for the five bucks her vanquished opponent slapped into it. Then, with a tap on her mighty gas pedal, she sped onto the I-85 ramp headed toward Atlanta.

  Chapter Eight

  LAUREL'S DESTINATION WAS a shopping plaza in Buckhead where Peggy had once taken her for what she called a girls' lunch. Laurel parked in a landscaped lot and walked through a main door worthy of Disney's Magic Kingdom. There were two floors of classy stores jammed together side by side, one shiny window after another, all full of expensive stuff glittering under bright lights. Music played and fake fountains splashed and women with perfect hair floated around looking rich. None of the shoppers seemed to have kids—at least not the kind that made noise. It was a far cry from the Sam's Club where Laurel made her annual trip to stock up on blue jeans and T-shirts, and for a moment she thought about splitting. But she had a mission. She was going to buy things and give them away and have fun doing it, like Peggy told her to. She plunged into the nearest store, determined to splurge for the first time in her life.

  She started looking for a gift for Maggie, who was an easier nut to crack than Li'l Bit. “I want something warm. A sweater, maybe,” she told a saleswoman she'd hunted down. Maggie was cold all the time these days, but she refused to admit it because she didn't want to dress like a little old lady. “But it's got to be pretty too.”

  The saleswoman, who had been eyeing Laurel's Sam's Club ensemble like it wasn't quite clean, reluctantly produced a sweater in a buttery shade of yellow.

  “Luscious, isn't it?” she cooed.

  Out of force of habit, Laurel checked the price tag—and thought she was going to need CPR. “Four hundred and twenty bucks for a sweater?” she gasped, and started to give it back. But the saleswoman held out her hand to take it with an air of triumph—like she was glad she'd been right about the low-rent chick who was diminishing the value of her merchandise by standing near it—so Laurel said, “I'll take it.”

  After that, it got easy. The car had been an emotional purchase, born of impulse, and so outlandish it still didn't seem real. But the sweater was a deliberate choice and once she'd made it she seemed to cross some kind of line. A mindless calm came over her, as she went up and down escalators and in and out of stores. Soon she'd accumulated a fortune's worth of brightly colored sweaters and shawls, wrapped in tissue and tucked in discreetly gl
ossy boxes and shopping bags with logos on them. But she still hadn't found the perfect gift she felt was out there. She continued her quest with a vague sense that she'd know it when she saw it.

  And she did. It was on a rack of coats in a store that bore the name of a designer Laurel recognized from seeing his clothes on Nicole Kidman in People magazine. Except the word coat didn't begin to describe this garment. It was made out of a silky brocade and cut like a kimono. It was tiny—just long enough to come to Maggie's knees. But it was the colors that took Laurel's breath away. The brocade was a deep rosy pink; the glistening lining and cuffs were a pale pink satin. She grabbed it and knew the search for Maggie's gift was over.

  Clothes were out of the question for Li'l Bit, who had been wearing the same uniform of shirtwaist dress and Natural Bridge oxfords since the 1940s. But empowered by her success so far in the world of haute couture and consumerism, Laurel took off with purpose.

  Li'l Bit had two great passions in life: her gardens and opera. Every day for a week after Peggy's funeral, Li'l Bit had pulled her ancient phonograph out on the porch, hooked it up to an extension cord, hauled out a pile of scratchy old 78s, and played them at full screech—which, thank you, Jesus, wasn't very powerful on the aged equipment.

  “This is Richard Wagner's Twilight of the Gods,” Li'l Bit said. “I boycotted Wagner the day we all heard about Kristallnacht, and I've stuck to it all these years.” But the boycott was momentarily suspended for Peggy. Miserably unhappy as Li'l Bit was, Laurel could see how much she loved the opera.

  “Anyone who feels that way about music should have a CD player,” Laurel had said to Maggie.

  “I've told her and told her,” said Maggie. “She says she's used to her phonograph and it's too late for her to change.” Maggie gave an impatient little snort. She adored any new gadget that came her way and had kept the service guy from the appliance store a virtual prisoner for most of an afternoon when he came to install her TiVo, making him explain the intricacies of it over and over until she could negotiate it and her satellite dish with an assurance Laurel envied.