The Garden of Happy Endings (30 page)

Her stomach growled. “Good idea.” She peered out the window to see San Roque covered with a shawl of tiny hail. She sighed and turned back. “Maybe we’ll see an angel.”

“You’ve never believed me.”

“Yes I have, I do,” she said, sitting at the table, and speaking the truth. “I’m probably just jealous. Why did God give you an angel and a calling and I got—” She had been about to say
a broken heart and a very bad year
, but that wouldn’t be fair.

“You got a ministry of your own,” he said, ignoring the unspoken. “And I’m sure, if you want to see an angel, you could ask for it.”

She picked up her fork. “Or not.”

He met her gaze and started to sing Joan Osborne’s “One of Us,” and said, “Because seeing would mean you would have to believe.”

The rosary she carried in her pocket felt hot, and she only looked at him, wondering what it would take to believe completely, to be restored to the fullness of her faith, that deep and abiding love she had once felt.

“What if the pope were a woman?” she asked quietly, and took a bite of the perfect pancakes. “What would be different?”

Joaquin bent his head, his hands still beside his plate. Then he looked at her, and there was color burning over his cheekbones. “Everything,” he said.

Because she had loved him in so many ways over the decades, she let it go and nudged his hand. “Eat, Skinny Man.”

He picked up his fork.

* * *

O
ver breakfast, Joaquin had several phone calls from parishioners who were having problems as a result of the storm. The church secretary came in three times with pink slips filled with phone messages, and when two of the deacons arrived to examine the roof and church building for damage, he regretfully told her to check the gardens and get back to him.

So she and Charlie went outside alone. She stopped at San Roque and scraped away some clusters of hail that had piled up around his sandals and on his dog’s snout, suddenly wondering what the dog’s name was. She realized she didn’t know.

“Watch over the gardens, will you?” she said to the saint. “I know it’s not your realm, but we need help.” She zipped up her hoodie against the hail-chilled air, and wandered into the field, bracing herself for what she might find.

They weren’t alone anymore, she and her dog. A number of residents from the apartments were working their plots, plucking out twigs that had blown down from the fragile elms lining the space, bending in to examine the damage. The young man with the rose tattoo sat on the picnic bench at the center, and waved to her with a sunny smile. She waved back and made a mental note to have a conversation with him sometime soon. He seemed lonely.

Joseph, his black and silver hair falling loose down his back, used a hoe to gently scrape the rows between his plants. “Good morning!” he called, raising a gnarled hand in greeting. “Some storm, eh?”

She paused, looking over the orange plastic fencing. “How are your seedlings?”

“Oh, a little battered, but that’s just the way it is in springtime. Not all the little ones survive, huh?” He shrugged. “It’ll make the rest of them stronger.”

“I guess that’s the way to look at it.” She lifted a hand and went to check her own plot. She and Tamsin had purchased some chicken-wire fencing and had nailed it to the supports, making it look more tidy and official. Deacon had made a gate for her out of old lumber and a screen of chicken wire, and hinged it to the post with a spring, so it snapped crisply back in place when it was opened.

A lot of hailstones littered the garden, along with branches and twigs and a hundred billion elm seeds, which formed a pale green blanket over the ground. Elsa grunted in annoyance. No matter how many she swept up, thousands would sprout—sturdy, hopeful little trees ready to take over the world. Someone had told her once that elms were not native to Pueblo. Their branches were too fragile for the heavy snows that fell in spring and fall. And yet they had settled nicely into a landscape that needed big shade trees. There was one in the yard of the house in the Grove that spread its arms over the entire roof and backyard, a relief in July when the desert temperatures could hit a hundred or better.

The largest hailstones were the size of marbles, and just as hard—translucent, tiny balls of ice—but most were much smaller. Gingerly, Elsa plucked the heaviest ones off the plants they were crushing, and brushed away the smaller ones. A swath of tomatoes had been wiped out, their delicate pale green necks broken, their bodies drowned in mud. The squashes that had looked so sturdy only hours before had been assaulted, their leaves shredded in places, a couple knocked over entirely. In a day or two, she would know which ones would make it, but in general, it didn’t look as bad as she’d feared.

When she finished, she went to the children’s garden, making repairs to the vines, cleaning out the fallen twigs, and then moved on to the church kitchen plot, which had taken the least damage, for no reason Elsa could pinpoint. Those done, she walked up the aisles, looking to see if there were any other
repairs she could make on behalf of gardeners who were at work or otherwise unavailable. Joseph was doing the same, she noticed, tucking into this garden or that, shaking a rattle, singing in a voice that reached some knot in the back of her neck and untangled it.

Calvin’s mother knelt in her plot, her long hair looped back into a scrunchie at the base of her neck. “Hello, Paris,” Elsa said. “Did you get much damage?”

“Not too bad,” she said, and sat back on her heels, resting her muddy gloves on her knees. “The corn took a hit, but it’s early enough that I can reseed. And Calvin’s beans are going strong, so that’s the important thing.” She gestured to a vine climbing up a stout branch stuck in the ground.

“Healthy!”

“He thinks it’s going to grow up to heaven so he can ask Jesus for a dog.” She picked up her spade. “I don’t have the heart to tell him we couldn’t afford one if God Himself delivered it.”

Elsa sensed that Paris wanted to talk. “He does want a dog,” she agreed. “Talks about it all the time.”

“Don’t get me wrong, now. I like dogs just fine, but I can barely keep us fed, much less an animal. And they have to go to the vet and get shots and all that.” She poked the ground savagely. “It’d be good company for him, though. I know he’s lonely.”

As if to illustrate the companionship possibilities of dogs, Charlie raced up from some errand and dropped a stick at Elsa’s feet. She chuckled and picked up the stick. “They are good company,” she said, throwing it as hard as she could. “But you’re right about the vet, too, and feeding him takes a lot.” Some prompt made her add, “A small dog doesn’t eat as much as Charlie, though.”

“Oh, I don’t know if I care for small dogs. My neighbor’s got a Chihuahua and it’s the noisiest little thing, and he always seems so
nervous
.”

“Well. Not all small dogs are Chihuahuas.”

Paris nodded politely.

“Where’s your family?”

“Kentucky.” Another poke at the earth. “Bunch of loud rednecks.”

“All of them?”

She inclined her head in assent, as if Elsa could not know how deep that redneckedness could go. “I’m not stupid. I’d go home, where it would be easier, but they’d never accept my baby.”

“Their loss.”

The girl’s face blazed as she met Elsa’s eyes fully for the first time. “He’s a good boy.”

“He is,” Elsa said. “Very charming, and very, very smart. He can be anything.” Elsa smiled. “Anytime you need help with him, you can call me. We have a really good time together, and Charlie loves him.”

“That’s real nice of you. You’re the minister, right? Father Jack’s friend?”

Elsa nodded.

“Thanks. Calvin sure likes to be with you, and he thinks Deacon hung the moon.”

“All the boys do. He takes time to pay attention to them.”

“Rare.” Paris brushed elm seeds away from a row of what looked like peppers. “You’ve got a good man there.”

Elsa made a noise between a laugh and a protest. “Oh, no. He’s not my—it’s not like that. We’re friends.”

“Is that right,” Paris said, not a question.

A voice cried from the other side of the field. “Elsa!” She turned, and Joaquin was walking their way, her phone in his hand.

“Whoops. I left my phone in the rectory again. Nice talking to you, Paris. I meant what I said. You can call me if you need somebody to watch him, or help with anything.”

“Thanks, Miss Elsa.”

Elsa hurried back to meet Joaquin. He gave her the phone, which had a live call on it. “It’s your pal,” he said.

Deacon’s name was on the screen, and for the space of a second, Elsa found herself hesitating.
You’ve got a good man there
. Joaquin looked at her down his hawkish nose, lashes making a shadow over his eyes in the bright light. Holding his gaze, she put the phone to her ear. “Hello?”

“Hey, sweetheart, are you still over there at the gardens?” he said in his raspy voice.

“I am,” she said, and turned from Joaquin, walking away so that she could listen to Deacon in peace. “What do you need?”

“Will you take a look at my plot and make sure it’s not too wrecked?”

“I’ll walk over there right now. Do you want to call me back or wait until I get there?”

“I’ll wait, sugar.”

“Oof!” Charlie slammed into her legs and dropped a stick. “Don’t you ever get tired of fetch, dog?”

On the other end of the line, Deacon laughed, and she held the phone closer to her ear, pausing as all the nerves along her nape and spine rustled to life, as if that sound was a hand, brushing over her skin. “Good luck with that.”

She flung the stick hard, and Charlie raced after it. Holding the phone to her ear, she walked toward the plot that Deacon had planted. He was quiet on the other end of the line, and then murmured a direction to someone: “Cut those bushes away there.”

“Okay,” she said, “I’m here.” And the situation here was not as good as she would have liked. Fully half the plants were drowned or smashed. “Well,” she said, kneeling, “the good news is that a lot of the babies are doing fine. Corn and collards look good. Tomatoes are a complete loss, though.” She brushed half-melted stones away. “Oh, wait. There are some that look like they’ll be fine.”

“Bad, though, huh?”

“Not that bad. You don’t have to start from scratch.”

“All right, then. I’ll try and get over there at lunchtime, see what I can do.”

“No need. I’ll knock the hailstones off and get the branches out, and you can come after work.”

“You don’t have to do all that.”

“I don’t mind, sweetheart.”

He laughed again, and Elsa closed her eyes. “So, see you tomorrow?”

“Yes.”

O
n Saturday morning, Tamsin opened the fabric department, arriving at seven to get everything ready for the busy day. She loved being there first, going through the bolts of fabric to be certain each one draped just so, sometimes rearranging bolts to create a more inviting display, and making sure that all of the little packets of tape and pins and various notions were where they should be. She wore a tape measure around her neck, and her reading glasses dangling from a cord. For three years, she’d been using the glasses only when no one else was around, but it was impossible to do this job without them—cut fabric and read prices and read the lists of notions on pattern envelopes—so she’d given up her vanity and let them hang around her neck like some old lady.

It was a challenging job, and for the first week, her back ached so badly that she soaked in the tub for an hour when she got home. It was also embarrassing to face where she was working. How could she be in her forties and have so few employable skills that she had to work at Walmart, as if she were a teenager?

But she was grateful for the money. One of her quilts had sold on eBay, bringing in two hundred dollars, yet that was just a drop
in the bucket. It was a blessing that Elsa had the house, that they could live rent-free. Even in the short amount of time she’d been working at the store, she couldn’t believe the struggle many of her fellow employees faced just trying to make ends meet.

It was humbling. Nobody here drank five-dollar coffee drinks. The first time she heard someone describe a twenty-dollar haircut as expensive, she nearly laughed, before she realized they were serious. “How much do you pay?” she asked.

“I can go to Cost Cutters for twelve dollars,” the woman said.

Tamsin had regularly been spending close to seventy-five, not including the very expensive foil streaks she required every three months. It was the thing she probably missed the most. Not the gym or the fancy coffee drinks, but a good haircut and color. She’d been due for a cut and color just before her world fell apart and it was starting to look pretty gruesome now. She wasn’t graying, thank heaven, but the base color of her hair these days was a very boring dishwater, not a sunny blond. The line showed badly, and she was going to have to ask Elsa to help her do a home color job.

It was like going back in time. How she had scraped and saved to look halfway decent in high school! She’d read magazines obsessively (at the library, of course) to stay abreast of fashion trends and beauty shortcuts.