The Garden of Happy Endings (5 page)

“I don’t even come to church.”

“That’s all right.” He gestured for her to sit down and took a seat himself. “Lots of other people don’t come to Mass, either, but they do work around the church. What would you like to see done with the field?”

“I don’t know, I haven’t thought about that. It’s just ugly and not very inspiring. Maybe it could be—” She paused, running through possibilities “—a community garden! Wouldn’t that be great?”

He inclined his head, a quizzical expression on his brow. “Do you think it’s possible?”

“Sure, why not? We’d have to raze it and bring in some topsoil and, I don’t know, make little plots.” She stopped. “Oh, no you don’t, Mr. Machiavelli. I know you.”

“You don’t have to commit to anything right now, but what if you just looked into what exactly would be required, and got back to me?”

Tamsin thought of the garden, the flat-eyed boys, and then the transformation. Maybe she did need a project. “I’ll look into it.”

He smiled. “Thank you,” he said with emphasis, then sobered. “I asked you here today to talk about Elsa.”

“Are you worried, too? I can’t put my finger on it, but she just doesn’t sound right.”

“She’s stopped taking my calls. We usually talk at least once a week, sometimes more.”

Tamsin blinked. “You do? Even after all this time?”

As if he saw nothing strange at all in that, he nodded. “We’ve been friends for twenty-seven years. We share a calling.” He shrugged. “It feels very natural.”

“So when was the last time you talked to her?”

“She sent me an email about a week ago, but before that, it was at least a couple of weeks. I call, but she doesn’t call back.”

“That’s not making me any happier.” Tamsin frowned. “She just sounds … weird. Flat. Like she’s not all there.” She made a decision on the spot. “I’m going to fly to Seattle.” She stood. “I’ll let you know what’s going on.”

“Please. And ask her to get in touch with me. Tell her I’m worried.”

E
lsa had loved Sunday mornings her entire life. As a child, she’d even liked the ritual of a good long bath on Saturday night, and having her hair washed. Of course, she’d hated the pins and curlers her mother had put it up in, hated the way they interfered with sleep—her mother had been at war with Elsa’s hair from babyhood, when she was born with a headful of black corkscrews. But she’d endured even the discomfort of sleeping in rollers for the pleasure of church.

On Sunday mornings, she liked getting dressed in special clothes, held just for this one sacred day, and then having a better breakfast than usual, after which she went to Sunday school. There she learned about the saints and Jesus and the Blessed Mother, who was always her favorite, with her pretty face and kind eyes. Jesus was good, but he seemed like a teenager, a little aloof and far away, as if he’d want to be with his friends and
would be annoyed if she bothered him, as her sister, Tamsin, often was.

Although no one else in her family had particularly stuck with it—her parents had only gone out of duty—Elsa loved church even when she went alone. She never missed Sunday school, which was where she had met Joaquin in the first place. They were in the same Sunday school class in the fifth grade. He loved it as much as she did.

Since becoming a minister, Elsa had grown to love Sunday mornings even more. She still had rituals. Her Sunday clothes had become simple linen slacks and tunics in neutral colors, paired with bright scarves. People brought her scarves from their travels now, beautiful things in amazing fabrics and textures. She also had a massive collection of bracelets, but only wore one at a time, since she gestured so much giving her sermons. Gestured and paced and paused and stopped.

She adored it. Part teaching, part theater, part pure love offering, a way to serve the world and the people in it.

This gloomy November morning was the first Sunday of Advent. She rose at five, as was her habit. Usually she spent time in meditation before she took a shower, but lately she couldn’t bear to sit in silence in the small room she had set aside for the purpose.

Instead, she took Charlie for a long walk in the drizzle. He never minded. She had a good raincoat, and the repetitive motion, breathing in the cool air, the stillness of early morning were as steadying for her as meditation.

When she returned home, she had her shower and let her hair dry, curly and long, over her shoulders. She chose a deep purple scarf of thinnest, airiest silk, in honor of the vestments priests wore at the beginning of Advent. Her bracelet was an enameled purple cuff.

She could do this.

It was her habit to eat a good breakfast, oatmeal or eggs, along with strong milky tea and some cheery rock music to raise her energy. Salt-N-Pepa and Cyndi Lauper, Motown and The Cars. Light, happy songs to get her heart into the right space. Her sermons were woven of the challenge of being human and the pleasure of being one with the Divine, and joy was always her goal. Uplift. Happiness. Joyful people could overcome trouble and illness and sorrow. Joy could blot out darkness.

And this was a powerful, beautiful Sunday, one of the best of the year. Advent. Light arriving in the darkness of the world.

But she felt no light, anywhere in her, anywhere in the world. It was always a challenge to adjust to the rainy season, but this year it was even more difficult. They had not seen the sun since the harvest festival, almost two solid months before. The deep gloom, the eternal, endless sound of rain falling and falling and falling, and the constant cold damp were taking their toll.

Focus
, she told herself, drinking tea and poking at a bowl of oatmeal. She went over her notes for the sermon.
The light coming into the world. The beginning of the most sacred season for Christians. Advent. The birth of Christ. In metaphysical terms, a new start for all
.

An R.E.M. song wound through her head, mocking.
Losing my religion
.

Lost. It was lost.

And yet, she had an obligation to her congregation, who were still reeling. A web of soft despair had fallen over them, like a people enchanted in an old fairy tale, and they were looking to Elsa to help them shake it off.

This morning, she would give them the first Advent candle. She would sing the first Christmas carols of the season and would act
as if
—as if she believed, as if she still loved this season with abiding passion, as if there was healing if they would only reach for it.

At her feet, Charlie whined softly and licked her shin. “It’s all
right, baby,” she said. But it was hard to fool a dog. “Let’s go to church, shall we?”

He leapt to his feet and they drove over in the rain.

The church was tucked into a neighborhood full of monkey trees and firs and hemlocks, the ground thick with ferns and moss and greenery of a thousand varieties. Elsa had grown up in the high, bright deserts of southern Colorado, and she never ceased to marvel at the number of things that grew here.

She had learned to carry an umbrella, which she opened now before she left the car, keeping it angled so that her hair and clothing stayed dry. Charlie leapt out of the car behind her, padding into her office, where he would stay until after the service.

It was dark enough that she had to turn on the lamps. She closed the door behind her so that random people would not disturb her before she grappled with this morning’s lesson. She could hear the small choir practicing in the sanctuary, and women talking and laughing in the kitchen. It was a church filled with artists and massage therapists, professors and students, a vibrant, energetic—and often eccentric—crowd. They arrived at Unity through metaphysics and Wicca, fallen away Catholicism or old-school theologies that no longer served modern, questing populations. There were meetings for mothers and children, for Abraham adherents, for Reiki sessions, and studying Lessons in Truth. The bulletin board held flyers for masseuses and jewelry makers, for psychic readings of many varieties and lessons in shamanism.

She loved them, every single one of them. How—

A strong knock shattered her thoughts, and Elsa scowled. They knew better than to disturb her on a Sunday morning when her office door was closed. Who in the world …?

She opened the door, prepared to deliver a firm correction. Instead, she gaped at her sister, Tamsin. Tall and sleek, as long-legged as a Barbie doll, she was as pretty as Elsa was plain. Their
mother used to say that Elsa was as ordinary as peas, while Tamsin was a dinner plate dahlia.

“Hi,” she said. “Surprise.”

Elsa blurted out, “What are you doing here?”

“I came to see how you are.” She looked Elsa up and down. “Turns out I was right to be worried. When was the last time you ate?”

Elsa held up her hands. “Look, I can’t do this right now. You’re going to have to come back after church.” She gestured behind her to the lamplit office, her desk, scattered with paper. “I-I have work to do. I have a sermon in an hour.”

“That’s fine.” Tamsin took a step back. “I’ll go find the kitchen and get a cup of coffee, leave you to it.”

“Okay. I’ll see you around one.”

“Can’t I stay and listen to the sermon? I’ve never heard you preach.”

“Teach. We call it a lesson.”

Tamsin shrugged. Her hair was long, down to the middle of her back, and although she was eight years older than Elsa, she looked younger. “Teach, then. You know I’m not that big on sermons anyway.” She blew Elsa a little kiss. “Get back to it. I’ll see you in a while.”

Elsa closed the door, airless. If her sister had shown up, Elsa wasn’t covering her crisis as well as she’d thought. She turned back to the desk, looking at the papers stacked up there, the things she’d left undone. What was she doing with her time, anyway? It was like she lost hours each day to nothing at all.

None of that mattered right now. She had a lesson to deliver, and come hell or high water—both of which seemed likely this morning—she would give it. She kicked off a shoe and rubbed her foot along Charlie’s side. He thumped his tail against the floor.

Elsa focused on her task.

She could do this.

* * *

T
amsin sat through the sermon with a brick in her belly. Elsa had lost weight she could not afford to lose, and she had dark circles under her eyes. The worst was how her sister’s hands shook when she tried to light the Advent candle. It took her six tries. Six. The congregation sat in quiet agony as their minister dropped match after match, grimly determined to finish the task even if she burned the building down.

But as Elsa began to speak, Tamsin forgot all of that. How was it possible that she’d never heard her little sister give a sermon until now? She’d been a minister for more than ten years.

Elsa was transformed as she stepped forward, as if she had stepped into a new body. Her voice was vibrant and strong, her face radiant with love. She made her congregants laugh, and told them stories, and circled around to deliver a spiritual and emotional punch that had many of them reaching for tissues, including Tamsin. “Wow,” she breathed.

“Isn’t she amazing?” the woman sitting next to her said. “I’d just about given up on organized religion, when I came here and heard her talk.”

Tamsin nodded. After the service, she wandered down the hall to the fellowship room, where coffee and snacks were spread out on the counter. People greeted her, shook her hand, welcomed her, as she wandered around the room, mainly eavesdropping. The mood was subdued. “I like to think we’ll all feel better once winter is over,” one older woman said to her friend.

Elsa came into the room. “Everybody,” she called, lifting her hands in the air. “I want to introduce someone to you. This is my sister, Tamsin.” She pointed to the corner where Tamsin stood. “Raise your hand, sis. Isn’t she beautiful?”

Tamsin raised her hand, feeling a flush of pride in her relationship to this tiny woman with her beautiful hair and beaming smile. “Thanks.”

“We are so lucky to have her,” said a man standing near Tamsin. “It’s been a terrible time here, but she’s getting us through it.”

Tamsin squeezed his arm. “I heard. I’m so sorry.”

“Spirit will see us through,” he said. “Now, you take her out and get her something hearty to eat, why don’t you? She’s skin and bones lately.”

Tamsin had been imagining that she would take Elsa back home to Pueblo with her, at least for a few weeks, but she saw now that wouldn’t happen. No way Elsa would leave them, not when they were in such dire straits.

So, for today, Tamsin would do just what the man had suggested—feed her sister, make sure she was eating. She would listen if Elsa would talk. She would keep a close eye on her.

Maybe Elsa would come home at Christmas, just for a week or two. Or right after Christmas, since the church would want its minister on the holiest days of the year. She would talk her into it.

O
n the darkest day of the year, four days before Christmas, Elsa awakened long before dawn and made a pot of tea. As the tea bags steeped, she checked her phone messages and saw that Joaquin had called twice. She didn’t listen to the messages. It would be the same thing.
Call me. Call me. Call me
.