Garden of Angels (13 page)

Nineteen

On Monday morning, I was called down to Principal Hagan’s office. I knocked on the door, and when he opened it and I walked into the room, I found myself facing Jason, J.T. and Frankie, all sitting in a row of chairs. My mouth went bone-dry.

“Hello, Darcy,” Mr. Hagan said. “Sit down and join us.”

I sat in the chair he pointed to, across from the three boys.

The principal rocked back on his heels. “First off, Darcy, you’re not in any trouble.”

I felt no relief.

“I asked you here in hopes that you can clear up some confusion in the story two of these boys are telling me.” He gestured toward the stony-faced threesome. “Mr. Rucker and his friend have accused Mr. Polwalski of pulling a knife on them and threatening them with serious bodily harm. In fact”—Mr. Hagan paused, reached for a bag on his desk, opened it and pulled out Frankie’s slashed shirt—“they have even brought me evidence to support their story.”

I understood the situation instantly. J.T. was getting back at Jason the only way he could—by telling on him.

Mr. Hagan crossed his arms and continued in his strongly accented Southern voice. “Now, I pride myself in knowing what goes on in the lives of my students. Why, I’ve known most of the kids here all their lives. So, it has not escaped me that Mr. Rucker has, on occasion, given Mr. Polwalski a hard time.”

J.T. opened his mouth as if to speak, but Mr. Hagan gave him a withering look. “I am still talking, son.” He turned to me. “J.T. says that you were present when this knife incident happened. Therefore, I have called you in to either verify or refute the story.”

“What did Jason say?” I asked, buying myself some time.

Mr. Hagan glanced over at Jason, whose expression was inscrutable. “Mr. Polwalski has neither confirmed nor denied the story. In fact, he has said nothing in his defense. Not a word.”

Jason’s face was a mask of calm, and I wondered if his silence was peculiar to the streets where he’d grown up. I reminded myself that J.T. and Frankie had been out to do Jason bodily harm. If they hadn’t, the knife might never have appeared.

“Darcy?” Mr. Hagan’s voice sliced through my thoughts. “Were you present when this alleged incident occurred?”

I nodded.

“And did Mr. Polwalski draw a knife?”

My conscience dogged me to be truthful. And then there
was
my blushing problem—any hint of a lie was likely to turn me cherry red. J.T. shot me threatening looks. Yet what he was doing to Jason angered me. He was a rat fink. He had gone to Principal Hagan because he couldn’t get even with Jason any other way. This incident would surely mean an automatic expulsion. And with it, J.T. would be free to strut and brag about how he had gotten Jason thrown out of school. Jason would not graduate, and J.T. would be free to terrorize again. He was a football hero. He was a god. Who would stop him?

I looked up into Mr. Hagan’s eyes. “Here’s what happened,” I said. “J.T. and Frankie were intent on taking Jason out. They found him alone in the junkyard with me and figured it would be a good time to do it. Jason saw them coming. He grabbed my hand and we ran to his motorcycle, got on and got out of there as fast as we could.”

J.T. shot forward. “You lying little b—”

“Hush your mouth, J.T.!” Mr. Hagan roared. “You will not speak like that to anyone in my office. Understand?”

“But she’s lying! Jason had a knife. You’ve got the shirt to prove it.”

“Anyone could have cut this shirt, J.T.,” Mr. Hagan said. He turned back to me. “So, Darcy, you’re saying that you never saw a knife?”

I sat very straight, my gaze riveted on the wall just above J.T.’s head. “No, sir, I didn’t see a knife.” I didn’t flinch. And for the first time in the history of my life, my face didn’t turn red and betray me.

“But he—” J.T. started.

“You are excused,” Mr. Hagan said. “All of you are excused. Return to your classes.”

We shuffled to our feet and crossed single file to the door.

“Thank you, Darcy,” Mr. Hagan said. “Please give my regards to your mother.”

“I will, sir,” I said.

In the hall, J.T. brushed past me and might have shoved me into the wall except that Jason sidled between us. We fell into step together. Jason said, “Hear me, Rucker. If you come back on Darcy in any way, I will hunt you down and finish what I started.”

“Are you threatening me again?” J.T. snarled.

“No,” Jason said. “I am predicting the future.”

J.T. and Frankie kept moving. With a thrill of satisfaction, I watched them swagger down the hall. Without another word, Jason took my hand and ducked out a side door, pulling me with him. The sun shone, but a cool breeze had kicked up.

“I have to go back to class,” I said. The enormity of what I’d just done was starting to sink in. I had lied. I had lied to the principal of the school. I, Darcy Rebecca Quinlin, who had been taught from infancy that lying was a sin.

Jason backed me against a brick wall. “Why did you do it, Darcy? Why did you lie for me?” His expression was wary and not one bit grateful.

I raised my chin in defiance. “Don’t be so conceited. It wasn’t all about you. I saw a chance to slam J.T. He had it coming.”

Jason studied my face as if looking for magic writing to appear and give him a message. After a long time, he said, “Thank you for saying what you did. I’m not sorry about what happened, but I wouldn’t want to make trouble for Carole and Jim.”

“Me either,” I said. And of course, I could never tell him that the real reason I had lied was because I loved him. No. I could never tell him that.

Mama came home in the middle of March. The night before Papa was to pick her up, I was writing a paper for English lit class at the kitchen table. Papa pulled out a chair across from me and said, “We need to talk, Darcy.”

“All right.” I put down my pencil and closed my Shakespeare book.

“Things will be different this time for your mother.”

“How so?”

He laced his fingers together. “Dr. Keller will be taking over her care.”

This surprised me, for I remembered that the reason she’d gone to Atlanta in the first place was because Dr. Keller couldn’t take care of her. “He has new equipment?” I asked.

“No, that’s not the kind of care she’ll need. The doctors in Atlanta have done all for her that they can. Dr. Keller will be taking over her physical care, the day-to-day things.”

I must have looked confused because Papa added, “That is to say, Dr. Keller will make certain that she’s pain-free as much as possible.”

This made sense. Doc Keller was a whole lot closer than the doctors at Emory. “Okay,” I said. “How’s he going to do that?”

“There’ll be pills, of course, but injections too.”

I leaned back in my chair. “Shots for pain?” I said, for clarification. “Faster than pills, I guess.”

“I must work. And you must attend school. Therefore, your mother will be spending a large portion of her day here alone at the house. Friends have promised to check in on her. Carole says she’ll come every day and fix lunch. I’m having the phone company install another phone line on Monday in our bedroom. If your mother has a bad spell with the pain and nobody’s here, she can call Doc Keller herself. If you’re here with her, you call Keller.”

I nodded, realizing that Papa was giving me an important mission. “You know I will, Papa. I mean, if Mama’s hurting, I’ll call the doctor to come help without you telling me to.”

Papa’s brow furrowed and I saw that his eyes were glistening. Concern squeezed my heart; sympathy caused a lump to rise in my throat. I rarely saw my father show emotion.

“What’s different this time?” I asked the question, scared of the answer.

“The cancer’s moved into her bones, Darcy.”

“What about all that chemo she’s been having?”

“It helped some. Not enough.”

“So that means her pain’s going to be a whole lot worse, is that it?”

He gave me a long, sad look. “Yes. It’ll be worse.”

“Then don’t you worry, I’ll call Dr. Keller,” I told him, hoping to make him more confident about my being alone with Mama if she had a spell of serious pain. “Papa, together we’ll help her through this.”

He just sat there staring at me until I began to wonder if I’d missed something. Finally, he heaved himself up from the table, came around and touched my cheek. “Course we will. Now, you go on back to your studying and I’m going to the living room to read the paper. When I bring your mother home tomorrow, I’ll put her straight to bed and you and I will care for her.”

I offered up my sunniest smile because he looked so sad. “To tomorrow,” I said, giving him a thumbs-up.

He kissed my forehead and left the kitchen, and I went back to my writing assignment.

Once Mama was home, school and what happened there became less important to me. But the rumors about Jason going after J.T. with a switchblade “for no reason at all” haunted the halls and refused to die. I simply listened when Becky Sue repeated them.

“Everyone’s saying that Jason almost stabbed Frankie to death and that nothing’s going to be done about it because J.T. has no reliable witnesses,” Becky said to me while we were walking home one afternoon in late March.

“That’s a problem,” I mumbled, acting bored and uninterested. The only part of the stories going around that I knew to be truthful was that Jason and Donna were history.

“Aren’t you the quiet one?” Becky Sue gave me one of her practiced looks that said she believed I was saying less than I knew.

“No use adding fuel to the fire,” I told her. I changed the subject. “How are you and Russell getting on?”

“Russell and I are doing just fine. He’s coming over later to do homework with me.”

“He kiss you yet?”

“Don’t you think I’d tell you if he had? I don’t keep secrets from my best friend,” she added pointedly.

I felt a stab of guilt. “Are you saying that I do?”

“I’m not saying any such thing. I’m just making an observation.”

“Based on what?”

“Maybe someone saw you getting off Jason’s motorcycle on that Friday J.T. said he was attacked. And maybe she’s been waiting for weeks for you to tell her about it.”

I felt my infamous blush spreading across my cheeks. “He gave me a ride,” I said, staring straight ahead. “I was on my way to the nursery when he saw me. And by then I was tired and so he offered me a ride home. That’s all there was to it.”

“And you didn’t see fit to tell me? Your best friend?” She sounded hurt.

“I—I forgot.” I winced as I lied.

Becky let out an exaggerated sigh. “Just so you know, it was my dad who found your wagon over by the junkyard and brought it home for you.”

I stopped. I had forgotten about the wagon appearing mysteriously on the front porch. I had guessed that Jason had returned it.

“Actually, Dad brought it to our house first,” Becky said. “I recognized it as your mother’s and told him so. Neither of us could figure out how it had wandered clear across town. I sure hope no one was trying to steal it.”

I knew she was waiting for an explanation and I was trying hard to think of one when we turned the corner of my street. Suddenly everything went out of my head, because parked in our driveway was a stranger’s car.

“Later!” I called to Becky, and I set off running.

Twenty

I slammed into the house and bolted up the stairs. Dr. Keller met me at the top. “Whoa. Slow down, missy,” he said.

“But Mama—” My breath was coming in gasps.

“Is sleeping,” Dr. Keller said. “She called me and I came over and gave her a shot.”

“I want to see her.” I tried to go around him, but he took me by the shoulders.

“Let her rest for now. Come down to the kitchen with me and pour me a glass of tea. Please,” he added when I didn’t budge.

In the kitchen, I opened a tray of ice and put several cubes in a glass. Dr. Keller set his black medical bag on the table. I dragged Mama’s cut crystal pitcher from the refrigerator and poured tea into the glass of ice and set it in front of him. “There,” I said.

“Thank you.” He drained the glass. “Why don’t you sit here with me?”

“You sure Mama’s all right?”

“The medicine’s very powerful. It knocks her out.”

I sat, taking deep breaths to calm my trembling. “Papa said you’d come whenever she called. I just wasn’t expecting it to be so soon after she got home.”

He measured me with his gaze. “How old are you now, Darcy?”

“I’ll be fifteen in July.”

He shook his head. “Where does the time go? Seems like only yesterday your mother was bringing you into my office for your baby shots.”

“I’ve grown up,” I announced.

“So you have. I hear good things about you, Darcy. I hear you’re very smart and planning on going off to college in a few years.”

“Only if Mama’s well,” I said.

He opened his medical bag and extracted a vial of clear liquid and a syringe. “You scared of needles?” he asked in his soft country drawl. “I ask because some people are.”

“I’m not scared.”

“I’ve spoken to your father,” he said, “and told him that I would like to leave a filled syringe here at the house.”

“Why?”

“So that if your mother is in great pain when I’m called and I’m away from my office, I won’t have to waste time stopping by my clinic to pick up supplies. I can just come straight over and give her the necessary injection.”

It made sense to me. “All right,” I said. All the while he was talking, he was preparing the syringe. I watched him swipe an alcohol swab across the rubber stopper on the vial, shoot air into the bottle and draw the clear liquid into the syringe. He held the filled syringe up to the light. “I’m checking for air bubbles,” he explained. “You’ve got to thump them out or it’ll affect the amount of the dose.” He tapped the side of the syringe barrel with his thumb and forefinger, then held it up to the light again. “See? Clean and ready to go.”

I remembered the time I’d stepped on a rusty nail and had to have a tetanus shot. “Is it hard to stick somebody?”

“Not at all,” he said. “The upper buttocks and the back side of the arm are perfect sites because that’s where body fat is concentrated, so it hurts less.”

He snapped the protective cap over the needle and held it out to me. I took it, rolled it gently between my fingers. The needle looked long and sharp through the transparent shield. “And now it’s ready?” I asked.

“Ready for injecting. Store it in a plastic food container in the back of your refrigerator, all right?”

I rummaged in the cupboard until I found a container that was the correct size to hold the syringe. Dr. Keller placed the filled syringe inside, closed the lid and gave it to me. I put it in the refrigerator.

“What’s the name of the pain medicine?” I asked.

“Morphine,” he said.

“And it’s really strong?” I didn’t want my mother to have any pain.

“Very strong,” he said. He picked up his medical bag and left.

I crept into Mama’s room. She was sound asleep. I didn’t want to leave her, so I stretched out on the floor beneath the bay window, spread out my books and started on my homework. Papa found me there when he came home. We went downstairs, where I explained what had happened.

His expression clouded. “I had hoped she wouldn’t have hurt so much, so soon.”

“Me too,” I said.

He sighed. “Well, I’m glad you were with her, anyway.”

I told Becky about it later on the phone and she was very sympathetic. The discussion we were having on the way home was forgotten, which suited me just fine. I was tired of lying, tired of covering up. I wished I had the courage to confess all to her, but I didn’t. I couldn’t tell her how I felt about Jason. Not when I knew my feelings would never be returned.

Mama had good days. One afternoon, when I arrived home from school, I found her sitting on a chaise lounge in our backyard, Grandmother’s quilt tucked around her. “Come sit with me, Darcy,” she said.

I pulled up a lawn chair. “You feeling better?” I asked.

“Somewhat. Truth is, I just couldn’t stay cooped up in that room one more minute. I had to come watch the flowers growing.”

The spring day was warm and bees were busy around the heads of flowers coaxed from the ground by the sun. Overhead trees were ripe with fresh green leaves. Spent blossoms littered the ground, making a carpet of small, soft petals. I breathed in the air, washed clean by an earlier rain shower. “I thought I’d put in the begonias on Saturday,” I told Mama.

“Might be best to wait another few weeks. Sometimes March can fool you into thinking winter has gone, when it hasn’t.”

Daylily stalks were coming up along the edge of the beds I’d planted with pansies in the fall. The lilies were bulbs that lay dormant underground but came up every year. The white flowers generally appeared around Easter. “To remind us of the Resurrection,” Mama always told me. I saw sweet flag and water mint and marsh marigolds beginning to bloom around the pond. By summer the rushes would be tall enough to whisper in the breeze.

Mama plucked at the quilt on her lap. “My garden club wants to come and take care of our gardens this spring and summer.”

“Why are they trying to take over your gardens? They have gardens of their own to care for.” I was irritated because it seemed to me that they were being pushy.

“I told them thank you, but that I’ve already asked Joe Moses to take over their care.”

“I can keep up the gardens,” I said, sitting up straighter.

“You have school. That’s the most important thing for you.”

“School will be out first of June.”

“And you don’t need to spend your summer slaving over this yard.”

“But I
like
doing it. And I’m good at it.”

“Yes, you are, but I’m just trying to make it easier for you.” Her expression turned wistful. “You can’t count on me helping at all, sugar. Not this year.”

“I can do it by myself,” I mumbled. “I really can.”

She reached over and squeezed my hand. “It’s all right to let go of some things—even the things we love. Sometimes, it’s even best.”

Her comments left me sad, and I remembered how we used to talk every day after school, but now, no more.

“Goodness, you look as sad as a one-eyed squirrel.” Mama took my hand. “Must be more on your mind than the gardens. Tell me what’s going on with you.”

I thought about my lying for Jason. I thought about the knife and how bad things could have gotten if he’d hurt J.T. or Frankie. I thought about the wild and unsettling emotions I felt whenever I was around Jason. Yet, for some reason, I couldn’t tell her any of that. Over the past months, my life had veered from the track of my parents’ well-ordered world, where their rules set the standards. I had taken steps that veered away from the comfort and predictability of what was expected of me, and I’d wandered afield, making my own way down a road barely discernible but strangely exciting. “Not too much to tell, Mama,” I finally said. “I’m working hard and staying out of trouble.”

She must have believed me because she said, “You’re a good girl, Darcy, and smart to boot. I’m so proud of you.”

We sat awhile, looking out across the beds of showy flowers. “Do you still believe that angels live in gardens, Mama?” I asked, wanting to turn time back. I wanted to be little again, when Mama was well and strong.

Mama laughed and kissed my cheek. “Why, child, I hear the rush of their wings every time I come out here. Listen.”

I tried, but the magic was gone. The angels had left us, alone and adrift in a world where I was afraid.

We were interrupted by Papa. He came down the back porch steps, his suit jacket thrown over his shoulders. “There you two are,” he said. “I thought you’d both run away.”

“I wouldn’t get far,” Mama said with a smile. She reached for his hand.

He bent and kissed her cheek. “May I join you?” He dragged over another lawn chair.

“Carole’s bringing over supper,” I told him. “Country-fried steak and mashed potatoes.”

“She’s very kind,” Mama said.

“And a good cook,” Papa added.

“Which is why you married me in the first place,” Mama said.

“I married you because you bullied me into matrimony.” Papa looked at me and winked.

“Bullied you?” Mama jabbed him in the ribs. “How so?”

Papa looked again at me. “She told me she was going to run off with Billy Sparks. Scared me witless. I fell to my knees right then and there and begged her to marry me.”

“Would you have married Billy Sparks?” I recalled the short, plump man who owned the hardware store and made a face.

“It was only a scare tactic,” Mama said.

“One that worked,” Papa added. “And one that made me the happiest man alive.”

Their fingers were interwined and they were staring at each other, making me feel like an intruder. I scraped back my chair and stood. “I have homework,” I announced.

They didn’t seem to notice when I clattered up the porch steps and slammed the screen door, leaving them to remember a past long before my time.

I confided to Becky Sue that Mama’s bad days were outweighing her good ones. I didn’t go to Becky’s house as much as I once had—maybe on the weekends, when Papa was at home. Nor did Becky often come to my house. It wasn’t anything we really discussed, it just started happening.

When I arrived home from school, the first thing I would do was check on my mother. Some days I found her sitting on the patio in the lounge chair reading her worn white leather Bible. I didn’t disturb her then because she was praying and visiting with God.

But usually she was in bed, often asleep, for she took many medications. She kept the TV set turned on in her and Papa’s room, “for the company,” she told me. “For the sound of other voices with something else to talk about besides myself.”

If she wanted anything, I brought it to her. I stayed if she let me, but she usually said, “Go on, honey. You don’t have to sit in this stuffy room with me.”

So I’d go downstairs to the kitchen table and start my homework. Just before six o’clock and Papa’s arrival, I’d rummage through the refrigerator and begin heating up whatever was there— Papa had told Carole that the church ladies didn’t have to bring supper every night, that we could make do with fewer deliveries. Although friends meant well, it was hard having them always popping over and giving us pitying looks and asking questions we couldn’t answer.

We took supper upstairs and ate in the bedroom, although Mama never ate much. The pills upset her stomach and she didn’t have much of an appetite.

I was doing my homework one afternoon when I heard a horrific crash from upstairs. I leaped up, took the stairs two at a time, my heart racing like a runaway train. I hurtled into Mama’s room. She was sitting on the floor, her arms wrapped tightly around her, rocking to and fro and crying. Scattered on the floor were hundreds of pills and several empty brown plastic prescription bottles. The top of her dresser had been swept clean and I knew without asking that she’d done it herself. I dropped to my knees in front of her. “Mama! What’s wrong?”

She wiped her eyes with her hands. “I had a fit, Darcy. An old-fashioned hissy fit.” Her voice was thick with tears. “I am so tired of all these pills. I am so tired of hurting. I am so tired. . . .” Her voice trailed off and my heart contracted.

“Let me help you back to bed,” I said.

She accepted my aid and I led her to the bed. I fluffed the pillows and smoothed the sheets and tucked her in.

She looked up at me, her eyes huge in her thin face. “I feel ashamed,” she whispered.

“It’s all right. You just rest. Can I get you some water?”

“Yes, and a pain pill too.”

“Which ones are they?” I stared in dismay at the littered floor.

“They’re here on my bedside table.”

I fished one out and got her a glass of fresh water and she took the pill. “I—I’m sorry, Darcy, about the mess.”

“Don’t think anything of it,” I said. “I’ve had a hissy fit on occasion myself.”

I watched her eyelids grow heavy, and when I was certain she was asleep, I got down on my hands and knees and started picking up pills and overturned bottles, searching under the bed and the furniture and in every nook and cranny where they might have rolled. I collected every one in a basket. I lugged it downstairs and spread everything out on the kitchen table, where I sorted the pills by color, size and shape. When I was finished, I stared at the row of bottles and their medical names. I realized that I had no earthly idea what pills went in which bottle. I began to cry. That was how Papa found me when he arrived home from work—standing at the kitchen table, crying, all the pills in separate heaps, the bottles lined up like soldiers.