The Devil's Interval (16 page)

I looked over my shoulder. “Calvin, for heaven's sake. That's exactly what I came outside to talk to you about.”

Calvin looked delighted and unchastened. “Come on, Maggie. Is she an irony-free chick or what? Absolutely no self-awareness. Just too tempting to poke a little fun.” I must have looked alarmed. “Don't worry, I won't misbehave in front of anyone. Did she tell you where she got the T-shirt?”

“That topic has not yet come up in conversation,” I said. “I'm too busy trying not to react to the Jesus talk.”

“Too bad. I admired it and she was just happy, happy, happy to tell me that it's the name of a food-gleaning operation. The
volunteers go to growers and restaurants and collect extra, usable food and A Mom's Place is one of the beneficiaries. Anyway, she's such a fan of the operation that the girls who live here had the T-shirt made for her with the name spelled out in rhinestones.”

“That's a relief,” I said. “I couldn't quite see a food-gleaning operation issuing rhinestone cowgirl, double entendre T-shirts.”

Calvin reached over and pecked me on the check. “Come on, Mags, lighten up. This whole story is weirding you out.”

“It is weird,” I said. “And it just seems to get stranger and a little more puzzling at every turn. How could somebody hang out here and at the Crimson Club––and have the same nickname at both locations?”

“Amazing Gracie?” asked Calvin. “That's what they called her at the Crimson Club, too, huh? Ms. Big Baskets already told me that's what they called her here.”

He gestured around the yard. “It is amazing what she accomplished here. Purity showed me the ‘before' pictures of the yard—lots of dirt and weeds and a couple of broken-down metal porch chairs.”

“It is beautiful,” I agreed. “And productive. So, what's your thought on the photos?”

“I don't know, I'm going to do some medium shots and get the whole place, and then I thought I'd try some tight shots. Maybe compose something.” He pointed to a canvas bag on the ground. “Purity got that out of the garage for me. It's still got Grace's gardening gloves and trowel in it, and one of those aprons with pockets you put stuff in—seeds, I guess, plus those goofy gardener shoes.”

“Clogs?”

“Yeah, I guess that's what you call 'em. You know, they look like what Hans Brinker would have worn when he took off the silver skates. Anyway, I think I'll do a still-life close-up—you know, dead broad's garden paraphernalia in the shadow of the baby peapods.”

“Sounds good. I'm going to look around a bit, and then go talk to Purity.”

“Hey, Maggie,” called Calvin, as I began walking around the perimeter of the yard. “See if the girls in the house can get one of those T-shirts for you.”

“Calvin,” I hissed. “Just shut up and shoot.”

“Oh, I'm sorry,” he added, sighting through the viewfinder, “I guess your baskets aren't so bountiful, huh?”

I wandered around the yard, admiring the elegance with which Grace had designed the space, giving the people who lived there—the ones she knew, and the ones yet to come—a place of both beauty and function.

“It's our own little Garden of Eden,” said a voice near my shoulder. I jumped a bit, and looked down to see Purity, two mugs of coffee in hand, looking out over the yard. She handed me a mug.

“Grace designed this, right?” I asked.

“Designed, organized the volunteers to build the raised beds, paid for the rock edging, and got everyone in the house to help her with the planting. We even had a meeting to discuss what vegetables we wanted in the garden.” She sighed. “She was a gift from God, taken from us too soon.”

I took a sip of coffee, so I didn't have to respond. Being around big-C Christians always makes me nervous. I'm just waiting for them to start trying to convert me or introduce the notion that most of the things I believe in—from a woman's right to choose to drinking really good Merlot with dinner—are at the least indulgences and probably full-fledged sins. But, it was hard to be very annoyed at Purity, given how she was spending every day of her life.

“How'd you get involved in this place?” I asked. “And how'd Grace get involved?”

“I started A Mom's Place,” said Purity. “I came out of seminary on the East Coast and my first assignment in the Bay Area was at a short-term shelter for runaway kids in the Tenderloin. After a while I realized that preaching at them was kinda counterproductive. These kids needed socks and something to eat, and a reason to try
to stay clean. Plus, we kept getting these young moms in there. I mean really young.”

“Like the girl who answered the door?” I asked.

“That young and younger. And even though they were really screwed-up and hungry, and most of them had been turning tricks, they loved their kids. And they wanted to keep Child Protective Services from taking the children away. Turns out, no matter how wrecked these girls were, they love their kids, in their own broken-down, self-destructive way.”

I thought about how most of my mom-pals spent much of every day obsessing about filmmaking camp or tennis clinics for their kids, and snapped at their husbands when they forgot and cut Little Madison's sandwich into rectangles, after having been issued strict instructions to cut it on the diagonal. I thought about my own willingness to carefully bite the nuts out of Josh's chocolate chip cookie at a birthday party, because he loved the cookie, hated the nuts. Now, when I mentioned that story, he'd sigh audibly and say, “Is this about me being a picky eater or about you being a great mom, little buddy?”

“Yeah, I know what you mean,” I said. “Moms are like that.”

“Anyway, the seminary trustees back home sent me some money to start this place, because I knew if I could get the moms on their own, away from people who weren't nearly as motivated to clean up their act, everybody would do better—the moms, the kids, everybody.”

“And here we are,” I said.

“Day to day, here we are,” she said. “Every morning I worry about how we're going to pay for groceries, but God always provides. That's how Grace got to us, I know.”

“How?”

“God sent her.”

“Okay, I get that part,” I said, a little impatiently. “But did God actually deliver her to your front porch, in a reed basket or something?”

Purity smiled, for the first time. “Almost.”

I waited. She gestured at her T-shirt. I tried to keep my eyes on her face, and not on what the T-shirt packaged. “Bountiful Baskets, the food-gleaners, used to pick up food from those gardens out in Golden Gate Park.”

“San Francisco Botanical Gardens?”

“That's the place. Mostly I think they grow ornamental stuff, but they've got fruit trees and nut trees, and the extra goes to places like us, and St. Anthony's Kitchen. Anyway, one day, Grace dropped off a couple baskets. I guess it was on her way home, and the Bountiful Baskets truck hadn't arrived, and she didn't want the fruit to go to waste.”

“So she just knocked on the door?”

“Yes. And at first, I thought she was a new volunteer for Bountiful Baskets. She was coming from her work at the Gardens, so she had on jeans with muddy knees, and a big smear of dirt on her cheek and a beat-up baseball cap. Minnesota Twins. That was five years ago, the Friday before Labor Day. She had two big baskets, one of lemons and limes, and one of almonds in the shell.”

I thought about Travis's story about Grace at the Crimson Club, and thought: not only does God move in mysterious ways, but she sends her angels out to far-flung neighborhoods, too. Maybe I should rethink my knee-jerk negative reaction to big-C Christians.

“Okay, so she dropped off the baskets,” I persisted.

“I took the baskets, and asked her if she wanted to come in. She apologized for how she looked, and I told her she looked just like the rest of us.” She took a deep breath.

“Can we sit down for a minute?” I asked. “Where's Andrea, by the way?”

“I asked one of our moms to show her around the house. Let's sit over there.” Purity led me to a bench under an apple tree, white with blossoms.

As we sat down, a breeze shook the branches and a little shower of pink and white blossoms rode the spring air down to our bench. Out of a window above our heads, I heard a woman singing, a sweet
soprano. I strained to hear the words, “Over my head/I hear music in the air/there must be a God somewhere.” Calvin turned at the sound of the music, and pointed his camera at the upper window.

I felt my antireligious guard start some serious dissolving. “This place is magical,” I said.

Purity smiled. “It is, isn't it? That first time Grace came in, she caught sight of the backyard and said, ‘We need a little Eden out here.' So that's what she created.”

“What did you think about her getting involved?”

Purity looked puzzled. “What did I think? I was grateful. I didn't know anything about her, except that she had an idea what she wanted to do in the backyard and it made a lot of sense. I'd grown up with a big vegetable garden in Kansas and knew you can feed a lot of people out of not much ground. But I never had the time or the money or help to put it in. Grace made all that happen.”

“Did you know who she was?”

“You mean, did I know she was a rich society lady?” asked Purity, and continued without waiting for me to answer. “Not the first day I met her, and not for a long time afterward. But I figured out she had money pretty early on. Every time we needed something for the garden, she'd bring it. And she organized a lot of volunteers from the San Francisco Botanical Gardens to come help us. It's not like I spent my day reading the society pages, but one of the moms who was here at the time read everything in the paper, front to back, and one day she gave this little yell and said, ‘Hey, there's Amazing Grace. In a really, really fancy dress.' All the other girls who were home came to look. And there was Grace, not in jeans, like we saw her here, working outside, but in this glittery, strapless dress. And the mayor had his arm around her.”

“Did that make you treat her differently?”

Purity shrugged. “It didn't matter to me, I don't take the Bible so literally that I think angels have to dress in wings and robes all the time. If God wanted to send us an angel in an evening gown or in muddy jeans, smelling of chicken manure, what did I care?
By then, Grace had the backyard in pretty good shape, and she'd brought us a brand-new barbecue, and we were having cookouts. One of our moms said, ‘Just like we're a real family on television.'”

I breathed in the fragrance from the apple tree and watched Calvin wandering around in the late afternoon light, shooting the yard. Somehow the idea of making this little piece of paradise look “noir” seemed vaguely disrespectful. Irreverent. Ungodly. I shook myself. A few more visits here, and this little Jew would be confessing Jesus Christ as her personal savior.

I turned back to Purity. “So how much did you get to know about the rest of Grace's life?”

“Not much. Every once in a while, she'd stop by to drop something off, not to work in the yard, and she'd be dressed up. I think she felt self-conscious about coming here looking like that. But the girls loved seeing her. Plus, one of our moms was finishing regular high school. She was a really good student, and very pretty, and this very nice college boy who was tutoring at the high school invited her to his fraternity formal dance, and she was so excited. But, of course, we couldn't afford to buy her a fancy dress. So, Grace brought a whole bunch of beautiful dresses over here, from her closet, and probably from some of her friends. And the girls all had a fashion show, and helped Carol Ann, that was the mom with the date, pick out a dress to wear. Plus, it was Carol Ann who had found her in the society pages, and she started a scrapbook of Grace all dressed up at her parties. She'd scour the paper, and clip everything she saw that had Grace's name or photo in it.”

“Did Grace know?”

Purity shook her head. “I don't think so. Carol Ann was a little shy about how closely she followed Grace's life.”

“Where's Carol Ann now?”

Purity sat up a little straighter. “She's one of our miracles. You know, she married that boy who invited her to the fraternity dance. He adopted her daughter, and now they both work, and she's finishing college, and he's in law school. They had another little girl, not long after Grace died. Actually, Grace helped her get
her job. She started out as a manicurist at this fancy spa, Ocean View, and now she's the assistant manager. She's really busy, with the job and college and two kids and all, but she stops by here sometimes and works in Grace's Garden. That's what we call it.” She shook her head. “Carol Ann was so upset after Grace was killed, I thought we were going to lose her.”

“Lose her? Meaning…”

“She'd go back on the street, start using.”

“But she didn't?”

“No, I think Grace gave her a vision of herself. She took her to get a manicure the day of the fraternity house formal, and stayed around to help her get dressed and meet her date. I can still see Grace, holding Carol Ann's daughter, Jenny, in her arms, waving goodbye from our front window. Every time Carol Ann comes over, and she's tired from juggling school and Jenny, and now, her younger daughter and work, I remind her that Grace is watching her.”