The First Gardener (10 page)

That’s when I gone and spied with my li’l eye sump’n big and ornery—Miz Eugenia comin’ down them stairs all decked out in some yeller outfit. I knowed she gon’ be carryin’ on like the canary she look like. She act like she live here. Drop in whenever she want and ain’t got the sense to keep her opinions to herself. She think all creation need to know her thoughts. I know God don’t make no mistakes, but with Eugenia . . . well, he mighta come close.

Shoulda knowed she be showin’ up on the first day a school. She kinda hobbled down them stairs—been walkin’ like that since she got that new knee. Look to me like she mighta got some used parts.

“Madeline Quinn London, how was my favorite grandchild’s first day of school?” The voice comin’ out a that red painted-up mouth ain’t sounded near as pleasant as any canary I done heard. But Maddie, she jump up and smile at her grandma like there ain’t no happier chil’ in this here world. Provin’ to me, kids’ll love ’bout near anything.

“Gigi!” Maddie gone and wrapped her tiny arms ’round that cushy middle section a her grandma. ’Bout near melted into her. I thought for one second I might need to go in and snatch her out. “It was awesome!”

Miz Eugenia raised her eyebrows and looked at me. I just nodded. Safest response I knowed. Learned that the hardest of ways.

“Awesome, huh?” she said.

“Yeah! Sit, Gigi. Sit.” Maddie plopped herself back down in the grass and patted the ground beside her like Gigi be a new puppy.

I was wonderin’ if Miz Eugenia actually gon’ do what Maddie want her to ’cause that woman be pretty picky ’bout her fancy outfits. She looked at herself, and I knowed she be figurin’ if she could sit in that green grass and rise up just as yeller. But she done shocked me and plopped herself right down there next to Maddie Mae.

Don’t know why I be so surprised, though. Miz Mackenzie bein’ Miz Eugenia’s only chil’ and all, and she and the gov’nor havin’ trouble makin’ ’nother baby—all that make Eugenia plumb near crazy over Maddie Mae. ’Bout took all I had, but I grabbed hold a her hand and helped her down. Her hand felt smooth as silk ’gainst my ol’ ruts.

Li’l one never knowed that sittin’ in the grass probably be one a the sweetest things her Gigi ever done for her. ’Cause she went right back to jabberin’ and carryin’ on.

“There’s going to be a school play this year and a field trip and I can take my lunch to school if I want, but I don’t know why I’d want to do that because they have tables and tables of food and you can just pick whatever you want. It’s kind of like Sunday dinner at your house, Gigi.”

If anyone else in the entire city a Nashville gone and compared Eugenia Quinn’s Sunday eatin’s to a school lunch, they be tarred and feathered and it’d be ’nounced in her church bulletin. But when Maddie say it, Miz Eugenia take it for the sheer compliment it be.

“Well, baby girl, sounds like you are going to have the best year ever. Now take that grass out of your mouth. You look like a boy.”

Maddie Mae pressed her lips together as if she be thinkin’. Eugenia eyed her. Li’l one just as stubborn. But she finally spit it out. The neighbor boy done saved us from any showdown. “Maddie!” he screamed.

Her legs automatically pushed her up off the ground. “Oliver! I went to school!”

“I know, silly. I saw ya there.”

I studied that boy’s wild curls. If he and Maddie grow up and get married, I sure hope she make that baby brush his hair.

“Wanna hear my campfire song?”

Chil’ ain’t never been without a campfire song.

“Sing it! Sing it!” Maddie squealed.

And off he went. All that chil’ need is an audience, and Maddie always give him one. His campfire songs, he just make ’em up right there on the spot. Chil’ got more ’magination than most people out there in Hollywood. Somebody needs to find this chil’ and make him famous.

“I was sitting on a log eating hair,

And then my grandpa came with a chair.

He chewed that up and hit me,

Then he went to see a movie.

It was
Shrek T-h-r-e-e
.

Then he went to Subway

And bought a pack of Lay’s.

He chewed that up and hit me,

Then he went to see a mo—”

Miz Eugenia cut him smack-dab off. “Seriously, darling, does your grandpa have to hit you in your new song?”

“It’s just a song, Gigi,” Maddie ’nounced.

“I’ve got one about my grandma. Want to hear that one?”

Gigi shook her head. “Why don’t you two run along and play. Looks like you both have a lot of energy that needs to be exerted.”

I ain’t sure either a ’em chil’rens knowed what
’xerted
mean, but ain’t no grass growed ’neath they feet neither ’cause they took off like streaks. Only problem, they done left me with Eugenia.

“They have the attention spans of gnats at that age, don’t they, Jeremiah?” She put her red-painted nails in that there grass and tried to push herself off. Didn’t work. She just kinda plopped right back there in place.

I got my own self up and reached down to help her. Lord knows I done filled up my quota for good deeds in one day. “Yes, ma’am, I reckon they do. Maddie Mae been talkin’ ’bout her day and bouncin’ so many directions, alls I could do is nod my head.”

She laughed. “I’ve no doubt.” Then she gone and said it. See, Miz Eugenia owned a flower shop ’fore Miz Mackenzie was born, so she convinced it be her Christian duty to tell me how to take care a my flowers. But she always start out complimentin’.

“The gardens look beautiful, Jeremiah.”

But there always be sump’n up under Miz Eugenia’s compliments. She never give one that ain’t followed up with a
but
.

“Aw, thank you, ma’am.” I dabbed at the top a my head with my ol’ blue handkerchief. I done started sweatin’ the minute I seen her lemon self come through that back door.

Then it come. Like it always do. Wrapped up in syrupy sweetness that would make a honeybee sick. “But you need to pay a little closer attention to your peonies over by the steps. You’re drowning them.”

“I’ll check on ’em, ma’am. I’ll check on ’em.”

“I know you’ve been doing this for a long time, Jeremiah, but I’ve tended gardens a long time too and have multiple awards to prove it.”

“Yes’m, you done tol’ me.” She tol’ me that so many times it be up inside my head ’fore it come moseyin’ out a her mouth.

“My friends Dimples and Berlyn have been saying that my gardens could be featured in
Southern Living
.”

Good Lord amercy. That Dimples woman, half–cross-eyed, has to tilt her head just so she can make out somebody’s face. And that Berlyn. Last time I seen that woman, she had more flowers on her dress than in my ’tire garden—even with half her bosoms hangin’ outside it. If them two be tellin’ Miz Eugenia she needs to be featured in
Southern Livin’s
, she sure ’nough hurtin’ for some compliments.

“Bet you could, ma’am.”

She smiled like she glad I ’greed. “Well, good, then. I guess you’ve got everything under control here.”

“Done my best for the last twenty-five years, ma’am. Ain’t always got it right, but I come pretty close most a the time.”

She gave me that same look she always give me, like she thought I was up to sump’n. “Well, have a good evening, Jeremiah.”

“You too, ma’am.” Soon as she take flight, I’d be right back to havin’ me a good evenin’.

Right ’fore it was time for me to leave, Maddie come dancin’ through my garden. “Our Hairy Toad Lilies are back, Jeremiah!”

“Yep,” I said. “Be that time a year.”

She shook her finger at me like she the teacher or sump’n. “Well, we got to get some fertilizer and stuff for ’em.”

I reached down, pattin’ that silky black hair. “We’ll take good care a ’em, me and you.”

She slipped her li’l hand inside my ol’ gnarly one when I started back to the house. She giggled. “I love that name, you know.”

I laughed. “Oh, yes’m, I sure ’nough know.”

Her mama done called out for her then. But ’fore she go, she tugged me down and gave me one a her soft kisses, smack-dab on my cheek. Then, ’fore I knowed it, she take wings and fly. She done reminded me a the words to that song my Shirley loved so much, from that movie where Julie Andrews had all them chil’rens. There be this line that say, “How do you catch a cloud and pin it down?”

Ever’ time I see that li’l thing come scootin’ through my garden, I hear them words. I know the answer too: you can’t. Ain’t no way to pin down no cloud.

I come to ’nother ’clusion too.

You simply ought not be tryin’.

Chapter 9

Gray gathered Maddie in his arms. She hung there like a rag doll. “Guess kindergarten can wear a little girl out.”

Mack set the book they had been reading on the side table and clicked off the terra-cotta lamp. “I was sure the chocolate shake would keep her up all night.”

He laughed. “She drank the whole thing, didn’t she?”

Mack laughed too as she followed him toward Maddie’s room. “Informed me I needed to get my own.”

Mack pulled back the pink toile coverlet from the twin bed. Gray laid Maddie’s sleeping body down and got her favorite Snow White nightgown from her top drawer. Scanning the Disney princess’s often-washed, fading face, he remembered how he had always wanted to marry her. He liked to tell Maddie that he had—that Mack was just like Snow White. Looked like her, was sweet like her. That’s why the Snow White nightgown was Maddie’s favorite.

He sat on the edge of the bed and studied the tiny feet of his baby. Everything about her was so delicate and petite—just like Mack. Her fingers were dainty; her toes were dainty; her thick lashes were sweeping and fine. His heart ached, looking at her. Realizing that one day some man could come and pretend he was all that. And she would believe it, and off they would ride into dark and looming clouds on some redneck Harley. . . .

He shook his head like a dog after a bath to rid himself of the runaway thought. But life had been like that for Gray ever since Maddie came along. Things that he never thought about before now mattered tremendously. Having this little girl to love had even affected the way he governed. Most everything he did was determined by the fact that the decisions he made would affect her future. And he wanted her to have a good one.

She was still decked out in her school uniform. She hadn’t wanted to take it off when she got home. So he slipped it from her body now and pulled the nightgown over her head without her even knowing the world was moving around her.

Mack sat on the other side of the bed, and he felt her studying him as he laid Maddie back down, her head on the pillow. “What?” he asked.

She smiled. “Nothing.”

“With you it is never nothing.”

She snickered. “It’s nothing. I promise; this time it’s nothing.”

He pulled up the coverlet and turned his face to Mack. “You’re lying.”

“I love watching you with her, Gray. Whenever I see you with her, something inside me loves you more. I can’t explain it. It’s like this love I have for you just bores deeper into my innards.”

“Now that’s a visual.” He smirked. “I bore into your innards.”

He leaned down and kissed Maddie on her head. Mack kissed her too. He took Maddie’s tiny palm in his own hand and studied it resting there as if his could consume it in a moment.

He reached over for Mack’s and prayed. “Lord, thank you for the sweet day you gave us with our Maddie lady. Thank you for the new friend she made, for the teacher she loves, and thank you especially that she didn’t get kicked out of school for telling the cafeteria lady the chicken nuggets don’t taste like chicken.”

He heard Mack giggle.

“And, Father, thank you for the gift she is to us. For giving us exactly what our hearts so longed for. Protect her heart. Don’t ever let her give it away to anything but what you desire. And we trust that you know when it will be time to add another child, though you know how much we want one. Keep us safe tonight. Give us wisdom in our duties, and—” he glanced at his wife—“deepen the love in our innards.”

Mack punched him.

“Amen.”

“You’re not supposed to joke when you pray.”

He stood. “You don’t think God laughs at my jokes?”

She walked toward the door. “I didn’t say that. I just said when you’re praying.”

He draped an arm around her shoulder and pulled her close as they walked down the hall. “Good answer.”

When they got to their bedroom, Mack slipped away from him and stepped into the bathroom to start her nightly routine.

“How much stuff do you have in there?” He peered into her drawer full of creams and cleansers as he reached for his toothbrush.

“As much as I need, thank you very much.” She patted the washcloth on her face.

He wiped his mouth. “I’m going to run downstairs and look over a few things real quick.”

She turned quickly. “Gray, no. Honestly, every night last week you said that, and you didn’t get to bed until past midnight. I’m tired of us not going to bed together. And the longer you’re in office, the worse it gets.”

He hated this argument. He glanced out at his nightstand. The marriage book
Love & War
was staring back at him, a reminder of the fine line between the two in a relationship. “I promised Kurt I’d read through this lawsuit before I went to the office tomorrow.”

“Some days it’s like you’re married to Kurt,” she snapped. “And what do your clerks do anyway?”

“Whatever I tell them to do. Right now we have more on our agenda than we’ve ever had, and it isn’t even a legislative session. I just need a little grace.”