The Garden of Happy Endings (34 page)

“We love you,” Tamsin repeated. “You’re home now. We’re going to take care of you. Everything will be all right.”

“No,” Alexa gasped. “Nothing is ever going to be okay again.” Her body shook with sobs. “It’s all ruined.”

After a time, Tamsin said, “Let’s go home, baby. You can get some sleep.”

A
lexa curled into her misery in the backseat, covering her head with her sweater so she could sleep. How she hated this long drive down I-25 to Pueblo! It was bright and sunny and the landscape
could have been Spain in some ways, the mountains and the yellow plains and the bright blue sky. But there were no tumbles of villages or ruined castles in the distance or British tourists with their apple-red cheeks. Only shopping malls and subdivisions.

And until they drove up in front of the house where her mother and Elsa had grown up, it didn’t really sink in that she wouldn’t be going
home
, to her pretty bedroom in the tower of the red sandstone Victorian with its blooming poppies and peonies that her mother had coaxed out of the earth.

Instead, they drove through a working-class neighborhood with frame houses all built in the twenties. Little houses, with two-foot spreads of lawn in front of them, and porches to sit on to wave at the neighbors. It was all neat enough. Flowers were blooming in the beds, tulips mostly, a few more exotic things.

She got out of the car feeling like her limbs would not carry her, and it finally occurred to her that she hadn’t eaten in … well, a really long time. “I need food,” she said.

“Done,” her mother replied, getting Alexa’s bag out of the trunk. “You go ahead. I’ll get these things.”

Elsa rushed ahead to open the front door. At the picture window, her dog barked cheerfully, his paws on the windowsill, making him seem very tall. He was big, with a shiny black coat, and a wagging tail. “What kind of dog is he?”

“This,” Elsa said, opening the door to let the dog come greet them, “is Charlie. Sit.” He obeyed, but his whole body wiggled with excitement as he looked from Elsa to Alexa, his mouth in a toothy smile. “He’s flat-coat retriever for sure, but something more than that, too. I don’t know what. Maybe Newfoundland.”

“He’s beautiful,” she said, holding out her hand so he could smell her. He made a low noise of longing and looked at Elsa.

“Okay, baby,” she said. “Greet.”

He stood up and came over to Alexa to sniff her all over, curiously.
She ran her hands over his fur, and it was as soft as it looked. “I’ve never had a dog.”

“He’s a good one.” Elsa put her keys down on a table by the door. “Come in, sweetie, and sit at the table. I’ll start some lunch. What would you like?”

The living room and dining room were one long rectangle, with windows down one side and a little archway opening into a tiny hallway. At the far end was another archway leading into the kitchen, where she could see a stove and a sink, and another window. “Where will I sleep?”

“Back here,” Elsa said. “Follow me.”

Alexa followed her through the kitchen to a room lined with windows that ran the width of the house, though it was only about ten feet wide. Pine paneling covered the walls and ceiling. White curtains, crisp and starched, hung at every window. Her mother’s doing, Alexa was sure. She had probably even sewn them. A double bed with a cast-iron headboard, clearly ancient, took up most of the space at one end. A white chenille bedspread covered it, and someone—her mother—had piled bright-colored pillows over it, along with the stuffed animals from her childhood. A simple chest of drawers, a small end table beside the bed, and the backdoor heading into the garden. That was it.

“Your mom thought you’d want to put your things around you, so they’re in the boxes right there. The room faces west, so it’s hot in the late afternoon, but with all the windows, you’ll have a nice breeze, and it won’t be too bright in the morning.”

“It’s pretty,” she said without feeling.

“Good. Your mom worked hard on it.”

“I can tell.” She put a hand over her middle.

“Come on, let’s eat. I have some cheese and bread and soup. What would you like? Eggs?”

A thousand choices danced over her imagination.
Pulpo
, and fish and
churros y chocolat
. “I wish you had churros,” she said.

Elsa laughed, touching her arm. “Me, too. At least you can get them here. When I left Spain, I went to England, and they had no churros at all.”

A breath of something green moved through her. She had forgotten that Elsa had felt this homesickness once, this longing for the place left behind. “Did you miss it when you came home? Spain, I mean?”

“Yes,” she said, and took one of Alexa’s hands. “Yes, I did. Eventually it gets better.”

Alexa thought of Carlos and tears began to well up in her eyes again, but she was too tired to cry anymore. She was dizzy with jet lag and hunger and grief, and she needed to eat and have a bath and go to bed, in that order. “I hope you’re right,” she said. “I guess I’d like some eggs.”

“I can do that.”

W
ednesday afternoon, Elsa stopped by the church to drop off the supplies she’d gathered from various sources for the soup kitchen—a local butcher had contributed bacon scraps and ham bones; Safeway had offered day-old doughnuts and mixed cookies, which were always popular, and a bag of expired produce that included wilted celery and carrots, and some collard greens that were wilting but not yet spoiled.

Perfect. She would make caldo gallego, a Spanish peasant soup, with beans and chorizo. Using the small budget that the church provided for the soup kitchen, she purchased mixed navy and pinto beans, big fresh onions, and some dinged canned tomatoes, half stewed, half chopped. All good. As summer ripened, they would be able to harvest a lot of these things themselves. Fresh, wholesome produce! She could hardly wait.

From her own pocket, she bought a fat chicken fryer, and left it in the car when she ran everything else inside. The beans went into a bowl for soaking overnight, and the celery into an icy bath to revive it.

St. Martha gazed down benevolently from her niche in the wall. Elsa put a cookie on her foot, then headed back out. She poked her head into the church office. Mrs. Timothy sat primly at the desk, typing into her computer. “Is Father free?” Elsa asked.

Mrs. Timothy shook her head, mouth tight. “Busy all afternoon,” she whispered.

Elsa waved, strangely relieved, and headed back home with her chicken. Tamsin was at work. Alexa sat on the couch, television remote in hand, flipping channels through soap operas. “Why don’t you take a walk, sweetheart? Take Charlie and get outside. It’s beautiful.”

Alexa barely moved, flipping again. “I don’t feel like it.”

Her color was better, but barely, and she still couldn’t seem to summon any appetite, picking at the scrambled eggs her mother had cooked, nibbling a taco, a section of tangerine. It had only been three days, but Elsa wanted to see Alexa get moving. She reached over, plucked the remote from the girl’s hand, and said, “Go sit on the porch, then.”

“I don’t feel like it.”

Elsa carried her canvas bag into the kitchen and put it on the counter. “I don’t care. Do it anyway. You need some fresh air to clear your head.”

“My head isn’t going to clear. My life is over.”

Torn, Elsa looked at the chicken, then put it away in the fridge. Grabbing Charlie’s leash, she said to Alexa, “Go put on some shoes. You’re going for a walk with me, like it or not.”

“Whatever.” She shrugged, as limp as any Victorian heroine, and shuffled off to find her shoes. Her hair was lifeless and greasy, and she had chapped lips from biting them constantly. It made Elsa think of Marianne in
Sense and Sensibility
. Maybe they should watch that movie, the one with Kate Winslet as Marianne.

It was tempting to be exasperated with such fainting despair. The adult who had weathered so much of life wanted to say,
Come on, pull up your bootstraps, kiddo, and get on with it. You have
your health, your brain, your life. I know a girl who was tortured to death. She’d love to be in your shoes right now
.

But once, Elsa had been twenty-two and shattered by a broken heart. That girl lived within her, too. She remembered the needles of sorrow sticking out all over her as if she’d fallen in a patch of prickly pear cactus, the hair-fine needles excruciating whenever anything brushed them, and everything did. Clothing, sights, sounds, songs, food, and drink. Anything that reminded her of her lost love.

Alexa had not said much about what had happened, except that she couldn’t be with Carlos anymore because of her father’s criminal behavior. They had broken up.

The girl came out with flip-flops on her feet, and her hair tied back in a ponytail. “Ready.”

“Good.”

It was the kind of day that made the hot Pueblo Augusts worthwhile. The lilacs were blooming in full force, their scent filling the air, and the flower beds around the neighborhood bloomed with tulips and budding poppies. Not even a breath of wind disturbed the air. The day was quiet, with children still at school, adults at work, and they walked along the old sidewalks at an easy pace. For a long time, neither of them spoke.

From her pocket, Elsa took the rosary beads she’d found in the garden and slid them around her wrist, cool and solid. She’d been carrying them in her pocket every day. She had also been wearing the medal Joaquin had given her.

“I went to England,” Elsa said. “When my heart was broken like yours is.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know, honestly. I just couldn’t bear to come home and go back to everything being the same as it was before we left.”

“Well, at least I don’t have that problem.”

“You’ve lost a lot, Alexa. Don’t make light of that. Your home, your father, your boyfriend.”

“My life,” she said, and there was such exhaustion in the word that Elsa wanted to stop and hug her on the street. Instead, she kept walking.

“What do you mean by that? Carlos?”

Alexa’s mouth worked. “I don’t want to talk about all this. Okay? Please?”

To each her own. Elsa would take it as a victory that Alexa walked with her. Breathed the fresh air. “Okay.”

“How far do we have to walk?”

“Just around the next block and back home, okay?”

W
hen they got back to the house, Elsa wouldn’t let Alexa turn the television on, so she went into the long bedroom they’d created, drew all the curtains, and crawled into bed with her MP3 player.

Elsa, too, found her player and stuck the buds in her ears, sliding through playlists until she found one that was a good mix of indie rock and blues and her favorite female vocalists of the moment, Pink and Sheryl Crow.

Long rays of deep gold light slanted through the kitchen window as she unwrapped the chicken, sturdy and fat, with clean pink-white skin. She washed it under cold water, and then cut it into pieces, legs and thighs first, then wings and back, which she set to one side. The breast she cut carefully in two plump pieces.

It was for Deacon. An offering. She had not stopped thinking of him since Saturday night, and although she had seen him a couple of times since, in the morning or evening at the gardens, he seemed to hold himself a little apart from her. Maybe, she thought, she had been mistaken about the attraction she sensed from him.

And yet, that kiss under the tree. The way he held her hand. Since Saturday night, she remembered over and over the way he had held her gaze and pulled her hand over his mouth. Over and
over she remembered the movement of his lips against the heart of her palm. Over and over it replayed in her imagination.

In her ears, Sheryl Crow sang an entreaty.
Are you strong enough?

As she patted the chicken dry, Alexa’s sorrow floated through her. The emotion was dark purple, as thick as smoke, obscuring all that was real and true about life. Elsa let it move in her own chest, accepting it, as she measured Crisco into a heavy cast-iron skillet. She paused for a moment, closing her eyes, imagining the smoke dispersing, thinning down until her niece was bathed in a warm golden light that spilled over her in her bed, soaking into her body, all the way into her bones.

A face came into Elsa’s meditation, a man bent over, weeping desperately. It startled her with its clarity. He wore a white shirt and his shoulders were broad and straight in the way of young men, and his hair was thick and curly.
Alexa!

Elsa did not move, waiting for more. But that was all there was, Alexa in her bed, soaking in sorrow and light in equal measures, the picture of the young man weeping.

She opened her eyes and went to the door of the bedroom. Alexa lay in a pile of skinny limbs. She was fast asleep, a real sleep, a healing sleep, and Elsa let it be. Later, she’d find out more.

In the meantime, Pink’s husky voice spilled out of the earphones, singing about a man in a garden, a man who called her Sugar, and in response, Elsa’s skin rippled all the way up her arms and back, into her hair. She thought of Deacon’s big hands and of her own hand on his face the other night.

A fever flushed her as she mixed flour and salt into a bowl, then added pepper, then a little more, until it speckled the flour. The last ingredient was nutmeg, a solid pinch. The flame beneath the skillet began to melt the fat. She imagined Deacon’s mouth on her own, imagined the slow heat of his tongue, and thought of his hands moving over her skin. She dredged chicken
pieces in the flour mixture, coating them thoroughly, and putting each piece on a clean plate to set, thinking of her and Deacon’s limbs tangled, his raspy voice in her ear.

When the fat was hot, she lowered the chicken into it carefully, letting it swell up in bubbles over the edges. The breasts went in last, flesh down. Elsa covered the pan and set the timer. The smell filled the kitchen, heat and seasoning and simmering skin.

She wiped her brow and her neck and sat down to wait.

E
lsa couldn’t sleep. She awakened every half hour or so, thinking of Alexa and the weeping man, or Deacon holding her hand against his face, or for some bizarre reason, Joaquin running along the levee. She half thought, half dreamed of her congregation back in Seattle wandering like loose sheep in a meadow, and she saw Kiki there among them, eating a taco. Elsa hugged her. “I thought you were dead,” she said, in relief. Kiki said, “You know better than that.”