The Three Miss Margarets (19 page)

For more than a decade she had a life that was as good as anyone’s life could be. Until that night at the cabin.

L
I’L
B
IT PULLED ON HER WORK BOOTS
and went outside. The flowers in the three terraces were all brown now, but the ridge that led to Lottie’s cabin would stay green all winter because of the pines. When her terrace gardens were in bloom there would be hundreds of flowers in the beds: dahlias, mignonettes, hyacinths, primroses, scarlet trumpet honeysuckle, azaleas, lily of the valley, cape cowslips, snowdrops, daffodils, tulips, camellias, and gardenias, all spread out in lush swatches of color. And scattered along the stone walls were the trees: purple beech, mountain ash, weeping poplar. Most of all there would be roses, pale heirlooms with names like Gloire de Dijon, Ro Souvinere de la Malmaison, and Salet.

There was not one plant on the entire property, from the Johnny-jump-ups to the Judas tree, that she didn’t know. Even though she might have to give in someday and hire someone to help her, she would be in command of every inch until she died.

She started for the shed where she kept her supplies and then stopped. She turned and headed in the opposite direction, to the edge of the woods. Since she seemed to be stuck in the past today, she decided she might as well be totally maudlin about it.

Li’l Bit made her way through the woods until she reached a small clearing surrounded by a low rock wall. The old graveyard of the Justines and the Bannings hadn’t been used in generations when she and Walter discovered it; the forest had all but reclaimed it. They had cleared away the trees to give the few remaining bushes and plantings a better chance in the sunlight. She walked to the headstone she had put up only ten years ago.

When Walter died, it had been years since she’d talked to him. She’d seen him from time to time; it was a small town, after all. He had stayed on to work at the resort. Peggy was the one who told her he had died and didn’t have any family to bury him.

So even though it caused much whispering, Li’l Bit took over. Walter was cremated, and she took the ashes back to bury them in the old cemetery they had discovered in her woods. She would be buried next to him, she decided. “So if any of that afterlife lunacy is real, start working now on getting used to the idea,” she told him.

Now she stood in front of his headstone. “I’m sorry if you were angry,” she said. “But I did the right thing. I didn’t have any other choice.” She leaned over and pinched a few yellow leaves off the gardenia bush she’d planted next to his grave. “It’s just . . . sometimes it’s hard to believe it was worth it.”

Chapter Eighteen

P
EGGY GOT UP, PUSHED THE
kitchen chair back from the table, and started walking; it was the only thing to do when the ghosts were hovering. She made her way upstairs to the mezzanine. She almost never went there anymore. After Dalt died she had moved out of the bedroom they had shared; now she slept in a small guest room on the first floor. She could have moved out of the house altogether after Dalt was gone. But she felt she had paid for the place.

On the mezzanine she passed the big master suite and headed for a small room next to it. On the other side of the room was the door to another suite, the playroom, bedroom, and bathroom that had been Grady’s when he was a child. If you were into symbolism, which she never had been until lately, you might say it was symbolic that this little room was squeezed between the two big chunks of Garrison-dominated space. Because a million years ago, in another lifetime, this was the room she had planned to use as a nursery.

W
HEN SHE WAS FIRST MARRIED
she hadn’t even thought about having a child. She was still too wary. But as time passed she realized her incredible good luck was not going to vanish. She really
was
Mrs. Dalton Garrison. She had all the shoes and dresses and hats and jewelry she could ever want. She had a house for her mama. She had a car with a driver. She had china and linens and silverware and glasses and rugs and sofas. She had long dinner parties with people old enough to be her parents, hours of time on her hands during the day when Dalt was working, and lonely nights when Dalt was out of town. She didn’t have any friends of her own except for Maggie and Li’l Bit.

And they were disappointed in her. They had expected her to pick up Miss Myrtis’s causes where she left off. There was no way to explain to them that Dalt might be fond of her, and he might enjoy showing her off, but he didn’t want her to have causes, or any thoughts that weren’t his.

Most nights when he was home, they swam in the pool after dinner, Dalt doing laps to keep in shape, she clowning around next to him trying to distract him. But there was the night when he came up behind her and whispered in her ear, “Pull down your suit,” and when the words brought back horrors and she froze, he started to pull it down for her. She was afraid she would start screaming, but the hands peeling down the suit were gentle, not mean, and when he turned her around to look at him, it was sweet kind Dalt smiling his young-boy smile, not the twisted red face of his son, and the scream stopped in her throat. Then the water was stroking her body, along with his hands, and when he pressed against her they floated together. Above them, the summer moon was so bright it was practically like sunshine coming through the trees. Dalt started to laugh from sheer pleasure, and she thought someday he could wash away forever what his son had done.

So when he led her out of the pool and back toward the house, she stopped him. “No, here,” she whispered. She lay down on one of the long wicker chaises and tried to pull him down next to her. “I have to go in the house and get something, sweetheart,” he said. But that wasn’t what she wanted. She reached up and kissed him and heard the little shudder his breath did when he was excited. “Not tonight. Please,” she said.

“We can’t take a chance.”

“I’m an old married lady, I’m not taking any chances.” She reached for him again.

“I can’t,” he said. “Not yet, sweetheart.”

That was her cue to leave it be, but for once she didn’t pick up on it.

“Why?”

He was getting irritated with her. “I couldn’t do that to Grady. Not now.” He turned away to indicate that the conversation was over.

“Don’t you want to have a baby with me, Dalt?”

He went and got them two towels to wrap up in. In the bright moonlight she could see the belly he was starting to grow in spite of how hard he worked not to have it. It made him look old.

“We have plenty of time to think about all of that,” he said. “Right now, I have to get that boy back on track.” Then he added, a little more softly, “I know he’s not a child, but he’s so lost right now, sweetheart. I have to help him.”

That was it. He left her there in the moonlight and went off to bed.

And that was when she knew she might get Grady out of her house, but she would never get him out of her life. And maybe it was the beginning of everything that happened later.

Dalt continued to fret over Grady. And he continued to blame his remarriage for Grady’s endless screwups. Grady started working at the resort full time. He was given a fancy title and a big salary and an office next to his father’s, and Dalt told everyone how proud he was to have his son at his side. There were regular complaints from employees who had to work for Grady. There were the schemes Grady came up with, like the nightclub in the lobby, which cost a small fortune and had to be closed because no one used it. And there was the accusation, never proved because the accountant who made it was fired, that Grady had been skimming money from the Gardens’ nonprofit funds—funds that allowed them to maintain their tax-exempt status.

“He’s just learning,” Dalt said, the first time Grady messed up.

“He’s having a hard time adjusting,” he said the second time.

Finally, he said, “He made a mistake; everyone makes mistakes.”

But Peggy noticed he scaled back Grady’s duties until there was nothing left really but the title and the salary. And because he felt guilty about doing it, he wouldn’t even consider anything—like having a baby—that might upset “the boy.”

But a need had opened up inside Peggy. She looked around her big safe house, and she saw a little girl in it. A child who raced through the halls, yelling and laughing, who made messes finger painting, had the run of the whole place, and never once felt grateful for it. A girl who took it for granted because it was hers and she belonged there. Peggy would teach her daughter to be as smart and strong as Maggie and Li’l Bit. Her little girl would never worry about pleasing anyone. She would never be afraid.

So Peggy took measurements in the little room she’d chosen to be the nursery. She picked out wallpaper with dancing bears on it. She picked the name Amanda for her dream baby and promised herself that no one would ever call her Mandy.

And then Dalt said no. Finally and forever. He didn’t want to have any more children. He explained it to her as if he were talking to a slow-witted child herself. “There’s more involved than you’ve thought of, sweetheart. Grady grew up thinking he was going to inherit everything. That may seem cold-blooded to you, but there’s a lot of money at stake. He has a right to know his inheritance is secure. And I’m not sure I want to divide up the pot too many ways. I don’t believe in doing that.” Then he smiled at her, as if that would make it better, and said, “Besides, you don’t want to give any young ’un an old coot like me for a daddy.”

And when she cried and said this was something they should decide between them, he said, in the cold voice he used when he was firing unsatisfactory employees, “Don’t make me choose between my son and you, Peggy.”

So the little room she thought would be a good nursery became a walk-in closet with moving racks for her dresses and a wall of shelves for her shoes.

“I probably would have been a terrible mother,” she told Li’l Bit and Maggie, when she could finally say it lightly. “Would have raised ax murderers.” Neither of them smiled.

“I know it isn’t easy to stand up for yourself when you feel grateful,” said Li’l Bit, “but sometimes you have to.” Which seemed to suggest that the rumors were true that she had hunted down Walter Bee at the Gardens and given him what for about something. Obviously, whatever it was about, she’d won, because after a brief hiatus he’d been back at her house four nights a week. “Dalt is wrong not to let you have children,” Li’l Bit said emphatically.

And Maggie added, “No one should be cheated of that.”

And then, because they were Maggie and Li’l Bit, they changed the subject.

But years later when Dalton was so sick and Li’l Bit and Maggie were taking turns spelling her when she nursed him, Peggy remembered what they’d said. She wondered whether, if any of them had had children of their own, it all might have been different.

P
EGGY TURNED AWAY
from the little room, which still held the bulk of her wardrobe in mothballs. The upshot of the room’s not becoming a nursery was that she never did fall in love with Dalt the way she could have. She hated Grady for that, too. That was the dark little fear that never went away: She could never be sure of her motives. She was always afraid she’d done what she did, at least in part, to get back at Grady.

Chapter Nineteen

L
AUREL WALKED TO THE PLACE
in the lobby where the cake showcases had stood, back when the
Gazette
was Krausner’s bakery. She sniffed. It was true; the vanilla smell did linger. Suddenly she was nine years old again and standing in that very spot, ordering the biggest birthday cake Krausner’s would sell her for six dollars and twenty-nine cents. It was not a memory she wanted to go back to. But that was what made the past such a bitch. Once you started remembering, like she had with Josh, you didn’t get to choose what came back to you.

S
HE’D HAD TO HITCH A RIDE
from her house to town so she could order the cake. Then she proudly counted out her money while Mr. Krausner wrote down her instructions in his spiral notebook. She could still remember what she’d told him she wanted: a cake covered with white icing with three big pink roses right smack in the center and around them, written in chocolate,
Happy Birthday Sara Jayne McCready
. After some debate with herself, she had decided against the less formal
Ma
. The grandeur of the event she was planning called for her mother’s full name spelled out in the swirling cursive that was the mark of Krausner’s best.

The cake had to be from Krausner’s. Everyone knew you couldn’t have a real birthday party without one. The Krausner’s cake was as important as the balloons and singing “Happy Birthday.”

Laurel herself had never had a birthday party. When she was real little she hadn’t known exactly when her birthday was, the day she was born not being something her ma wanted to dwell on.

She’d been invited to a few parties by kids in her class at school. Denny’s mama always saw to it that she got an invitation with Snoopy on the front wearing a happy-birthday hat and holding a balloon with lines on it that had the time and place written in. And there were a couple of other tenderhearted mothers who tried to include her. Sara Jayne never let her go. “We can’t invite them, so you’re not gonna go and make us look pitiful because you can’t pay them back.” Laurel understood. Most of her mother’s belief system was up for grabs at any point in time, but the one constant mantra in the chaos was, No-one-is-ever-gonna-feel-sorry-for-us.

Which was all the more reason for them to have a party. Laurel knew instinctively that in spite of the men who came out of her mother’s bedroom in the mornings, Sara Jayne was alone and friendless, even more than Laurel herself. That was why her mother was so unhappy that nothing Laurel did ever helped. Not the plaster of paris ashtray with her handprint in it that she made in school, or the times she cleaned the house until everything was shiny like on television commercials.

Her mother needed friends, nice friends. If she had some, it would change her life and, by proxy, Laurel’s. So Laurel was going to have a surprise party for Sara Jayne. In one masterful stroke she would establish them as people who issued invitations and had the right to accept them. They would belong. It would make her ma happy. Because who could resist a party where people sang your name and gave you presents just for being born? At age nine, Laurel Selene was not troubled by self-doubt. That had developed slowly over the years.

One thing was clear, she would need cash. Cakes and balloons cost money. But certain enterprises are blessed from the start. Or maybe it was the Lord helping those who helped themselves. Laurel had two semiregular sources of income. Three afternoons a week she stayed after school and worked for the school librarian; on weekends she did chores around the Methodist Church for the preacher’s wife, even though Sara Jayne was technically a Baptist.

By dropping hints to her two benefactresses, Laurel managed to wangle another day of work a week out of each of them and started making her party plans. She knew the right date, because her mother’s birthday, unlike hers, did not go totally unnoticed. Every year her ma got a birthday card with two five-dollar bills tucked inside it from her own mother, a person Laurel was never to refer to as her grandmother. She’d met this mystery relative once when she was barely old enough to grasp the significance of the event, and she had a vague recollection of a tiny woman with skin pulled tight over little bones, who immediately got into a fight with her ma and left without even coming into their house for a glass of water.

But the birthday cards still came every year. And every year Ma took the money to her favorite bar—which Laurel could have told her grandmother was what would happen if the lady had ever wanted to know. But thanks to the cards, Laurel knew the date was November fifteenth. She set the time at five o’clock, which seemed right for a gathering of grown-ups.

But which grown-ups? She couldn’t just set up a table outside the SuperSave and give out invitations like they were raffle tickets for a pancake supper. For the first time, little doubts started in the back of her mind, but she pushed them away.

Finally she settled on four women: Denny’s mother; Mrs. Peters, the preacher’s wife; Miss Hudson, the school librarian; and her beloved English teacher, Miss Norton. With such a small guest list it wouldn’t be the grand event she had envisioned, but if Denny’s father came, and Reverend Peters, and if Miss Hudson would bring along the aged mother she lived with, there would be enough people to make a good sound if they all sang “Happy Birthday” really loud.

After getting the balloons and the candles and paying in advance for the cake, her money was running low and she had to wait to buy the invitations. By the time she got them, it was too late to put them in the mail, so on the day before the big event, she delivered them by hand.

Neither Miss Norton nor Miss Hudson were at their desks, so she left the invitations for them. After school she biked to Denny’s house and stuffed his mama’s invitation in the mailbox, and then she headed for the church. Mrs. Peters was in the vestry, sorting through clothing that had been donated for the poor, and she insisted on reading the invitation right there and then. When she finished she looked a little stunned. Laurel realized there was a potential disaster she hadn’t thought of. People might not show up. She began talking fast.

“It’s a party for my ma, it’s her birthday. I have a cake and balloons and candles—”

“That sounds lovely, dear,” Mrs. Peters said, in the tone kind adults used when they didn’t mean it. “Does your mama know about this?”

“No, ma’am. It’s a surprise.”

The word
no
was hovering on Mrs. Peters’s lips; Laurel could see it. Desperation made her smart. Although she was pretty sure lying to a preacher’s wife damned you to hell, she blurted out, “I didn’t do it by myself. I had help from . . . from my grandma.”

For a moment she thought Mrs. Peters was going to ask her what her grandma’s name was, and she would have to die right there in the vestry. But instead Mrs. Peters smiled wearily. “Of course I’ll come, dear. Thank you so much for inviting me.”

“You’ll have a good time,” Laurel assured her. “I bought the cake from Krausner’s.” She ran off, leaving Mrs. Peters to watch after her.

When she looked back on it now, she figured the poor woman was probably remembering the old saying that no good deed goes unpunished.

O
N THE DAY OF THE PARTY
, Laurel woke up with a knot in her stomach. The enormity of what she was planning hit her, and she thought briefly of bailing out on the whole thing. But she’d given out the invitations, and Mr. Krausner was probably putting the roses on the cake at that very minute. There was no turning back. She checked to see that her ma was still safely sleeping, then got dressed, strapped her basket on her bike, and took off. She never rode her bike to town, it was too far and there was no way to get there without going on the highway. But this morning she didn’t have any choice.

Even though it was still early, cars and pickups whizzed past her, threatening to push her into the ditch at the side of the road. Eighteen-wheelers sprayed her with dirt and pebbles; diesel fumes made her eyes burn. A flatbed truck full of chickens on their way to the slaughterhouse pulled up next to her for a while; she was so close to it she could smell the stench and see the doomed birds flapping their wings. She promised God she would never ride her bike on the highway again if He would just let her get to Krausner’s. God was listening. She got there as the shop was opening.

The birthday cake was beautiful beyond her wildest dreams; it made her mouth water just to look at it, with pink roses so big they could have been real, and her ma’s name looking grand in chocolate swirls. She carefully lowered it into the bike basket and started the return trip.

By the time she reached the driveway to her house, her arms and neck were aching from the effort of keeping the basket steady.

There was a small porch on the back of the house where she was planning to hide the cake. She had started walking her bike over the bumpy grass when a familiar voice called out, “Where the hell have you been?”

It never occurred to her that Sara Jayne would get up so early. She tried to cut around fast to the back, but she was too late.

“What’s that?” Her mother came out into the yard and indicated the bike basket with her cigarette. It seemed to be one of her more alert mornings; she was even dressed. Laurel stood rooted to the ground. All her plans and work would be for nothing if she didn’t think of something to say. But she just couldn’t.

“I asked you a question.” Ma looked in the bike basket and saw the name on the cake box. “What are you doing with a cake from Krausner’s? Answer me.”

It dawned on Laurel that everything didn’t have to be over. There wouldn’t be a surprise anymore, which was disappointing, but it also might be for the best, because now at least she could be sure Ma would put on a skirt and blouse for the party, which was something that had been worrying her. She pushed down her kickstand so the bike wouldn’t fall over.

“It’s for your birthday,” she said.

“You wasted good money on that?” Ma gave a short laugh and turned to go back to the house.

“It’s for your party,” Laurel said.

Sara Jayne whirled around. “My what?”

“I’m having a birthday party for you.”

Her mother was coming toward her. “What the hell are you talking about, girl?”

“I invited some people—”

“You did what?”

“We’re gonna sing ‘Happy Birthday’—”

“You asked people to come here? To this pigsty?”

“I got a cake. It’s so pretty—”

“Who did you ask?”

“Just some people.”

“Who?”

“Mrs. Peters. She said she was real glad—”

“You invited the preacher’s wife?”

“She wanted to come.” Her mother grabbed her arm so hard it made her eyes water.

“Ma, please. I wanted you to have something nice. . . .” But her mother was dragging her across the yard to the house. “Ma, it’ll be all right.”

“All right?” Sara Jayne was screaming. “All right?” She pushed Laurel through the door of the house. “Look!” She grabbed Laurel’s head, twisting it back and forth. “Look at this! You asked people to come to this?”

Laurel was sobbing now, in big painful gulps. “I’ll clean it—” she started.

“You can’t get this clean enough for decent people! Don’t you know that? Don’t you know how decent people live?”

“Ma, I’m sorry—”

“Stop crying, damn you! I’m the one who should be crying. I’m the one who’s stuck with you!”

And that was when Laurel Selene McCready, age nine, learned that there were times in life when there was no way you could cry enough for the hurt you felt, so she stopped.

“Who else did you ask?” Sara Jayne demanded. Past caring, Laurel told her. Ma dragged her into the kitchen. “You come in here,” she said.

“What are you gonna do?”

“You’re gonna do it. You’re gonna call every one of those ladies you asked to come here, and you’re gonna tell them you’re a little liar. You’re gonna tell them there is no party.” Laurel had a picture of telling Miss Norton, whom she loved, and Miss Hudson, who was kind to her, and Denny’s mother—and most of all, Mrs. Peters.

“I don’t know the phone numbers.”

“I’ll look them up for you.”

“I can’t. . . .”

“Tell them it was a joke.”

“Please, Ma, don’t make me.”

“You got me into this, you’re gonna get me out of it.”

“I won’t.”

The belt was out of her mother’s blue jeans so fast she almost didn’t see it. But she felt it as it landed on the back of her legs.

“You do this to me and then you say you won’t?” Ma was screaming so high it was almost funny. The belt started falling in a pattern. “You took away everything!”
Whap!
“I’ve got nothing because of you!”
Whap!
“Nothing!”
Whap!

The belt was hitting her on the shoulders and the back, but she didn’t make a sound. She could feel Ma was tiring. Soon it would be over.

Sara Jayne dropped the belt on the floor, and stared at her, panting to catch her breath. Painfully, Laurel started for the phone. Her mother stopped her.

“No. Go outside,” she said. Laurel went out to the front yard.

After what felt like hours her mother came out, got into the car without a word, and drove off.

S
ARA
J
AYNE DIDN’T COME BACK
for the rest of the day. Laurel sat in the house and waited, not knowing what to do but not caring much either. Five o’clock came and no one showed up at the door looking for a party, so she knew it had been taken care of. At eight o’clock she made herself a sandwich. At ten she filled the tub and, in spite of the welts on her back and her legs, scrubbed herself carefully. She spread the sheets neatly on the sofa that served as her bed and went to sleep.

Toward morning, a familiar sound woke her. Ma was fumbling with the front door. She closed her eyes as Sara Jayne made her unsteady way into the kitchen. Then there were more sounds, of drawers opening and her mother bumping into things. Once she muttered “shit.” Laurel kept her eyes closed.