The Ladies of Garrison Gardens (16 page)

Chapter Thirty-three

T
HE TRAIN WAS LATE
getting in to Beltraine, so she walked into the hotel room just as Mama was coming home from the theater after the last show. The first thing Mama saw was the suitcase. And, of course, she recognized the gold monogram on the side.

“Oh, my God, Iva Claire. What have you done?” she demanded. “You went to see him, didn't you?”

It would have been silly to pretend she didn't know who Mama was talking about. Besides, she was too exhausted to try. Iva Claire nodded and braced herself for screaming and crying and things being thrown around the room. But Mama didn't move.

“So now you know what he's like,” she said quietly.

Iva Claire nodded again.

“You were hoping he'd take you in, weren't you? Do want to get away from me that much?”

If there ever was a time to try to explain how she felt about show business and school and having a real home, this was it. But Mama's big dark eyes were begging not to be hurt; she was holding herself stiffly as if she was waiting for a blow.

“Am I that bad, Claire de Lune?”

She was so small. So very, very small.

“Mama, I don't want to leave you.” She'd never felt so tired. But she walked across the room and put her arms around the rigid little body. “I'll never leave you, Mama.”

Mama pulled away to face her. “Then why did you go?”

“I was . . . curious. You never talk about him. You wouldn't tell me where I'm from. I wanted to know . . . that's all. Now I do. And I'm sorry I went.” That last part was honest, at least.

“Are you sure?” Mama's eyes were still begging. “I know sometimes I
can be . . . hard on you.”

“You're the best mama there ever was.”

Mama's smile was bright enough to light up Broadway. “I'm so glad!” She hugged Iva Claire. “Now you'll come back into the act and everything will be wonderful. We're going to be so happy, Claire de Lune, I promise.”

It was Benny who solved the problem of keeping Tassie in the act.

“We'll make it a trio,” he told Iva Claire. “You know that stuck-up way you act when you're onstage? Like you're too good for everyone around you? We can use that. And we'll find some places where you can mimic Tassie too. That's a real gift you got.”

So Iva Claire became the third Sunshine Sister. She wore Mama's costume even though it was too small and they had to adjust it. Tassie kept on wearing Iva Claire's, which was too big for her, because that was crucial to the shtick. They made a new dress for Mama out of a shiny pink fabric. Benny rehearsed them in a new routine; Tassie was still the sister who couldn't do anything right, and Iva Claire became the snooty one who tried to keep her in line, while Mama was oblivious to it all. Tassie did all her bits, walking up her own skirt, battling with her rose, but now Iva Claire gave her dirty looks that eventually led to shoving and a carefully choreographed fight. By the end of the act, Tassie and Iva Claire were rolling around on the floor, while Mama sang her heart out about starlight and dewdrops.

“We got ourselves a female knockabout comedy team!” Benny said proudly. Then he added, “We gotta drop the Rain part of the name though; it's too hokey. Just call yourselves the Sunshine Sisters, plain and simple. Has a nice ring to it.”

Tassie was overjoyed to have Iva Claire back in the act. “I'll never forget what you did, giving me your part,” she said. “But it's much better this way.”

Iva Claire could never explain that she hadn't done it for Tassie. She had simply tried to escape.

The new act worked. In the old days, Rain and Rain had always played the deuce, which meant they were the second team to go on. It was the spot reserved for the worst act on the bill. But when they opened in Alabama, the manager of the Melody took them out of the deuce and put them just ahead of DeLoura and Ritz for the closing. For the first time in their history, the Sunshine Sisters didn't have to worry about getting canned.

When the tour ended in Louisiana, there was a new decision to be made. The Sunshine Sisters were going back to New York, and Tassie was supposed to be going with Benny and Irene to the farm they'd bought in New Jersey for their retirement. Everyone knew what Tassie wanted to do, and it didn't include growing vegetables.

“She's got the business in her blood,” said Benny.

“When I was her age, if someone told me I had to live on a farm I'da run like hell,” said Irene.

But Benny had one stipulation. “Tassie's underage. We gotta get a lawyer and make this a legal arrangement,” he said. “We'll go to the same one in Georgia who wrote up the papers when we adopted Tassie.”

Mama tried to get him to go to a lawyer in Louisiana, but no amount of arguing would change Benny's mind. “You don't know what a hard time we had finding a lawyer who would do this the last time,” he said. “All them other legal beagles said we had to wait for a court hearing, even though we was on the road and couldn't stay in one place. Couple of them wanted to put our girl in an orphanage, said the stage was no place to grow up. This guy did everything nice and simple and quick in his office. I had to pay an arm and a leg, but he done fine by Tassie.”

So after the last night in New Orleans, Mama, Iva Claire, Tassie, Benny, and Irene took a train to Georgia. Benny's lawyer drew up papers saying Mama was Tassie's new guardian, and he changed her name from Tassie Ritz to Tassie Rain. Or at least, that was what he said he'd done. Iva Claire had her doubts about him. In fact, she didn't like him at all. His name was Stuart Lawrence.

Chapter Thirty-four

MRS. RAIN

2004

T
HE CHERRY CHILD
was a good listener. Or maybe it was just that after so many years it was a pleasure to remember the old days and talk about them. It was carefully edited talk, to be sure, with the names changed to protect the not-so-innocent, but it still felt good.

She never would have told Cherry any of it if the girl hadn't seen the picture of her in her Sunshine Sister costume. “You were an actress?” the girl had asked.

She could have nodded and left it at that. But Cherry was looking at her the way no one had in seventy years. Once again she had an audience. It was a feeling you never ever forgot. Or stopped missing.

“I was a vaudevillian, dear. There was a difference.”

And that was how she started digging up the past for the entertainment of her young companion.

“You tell such good stories, Mrs. Rain,” the girl said. “You make me laugh.”

Well, of course she did. She'd been a performer, for heaven's sake. That was something you didn't lose just because you weren't as young as you used to be. Look at George Burns. Of course there were some stories she couldn't tell, some that weren't funny, that could make you cry—or worse. Those were not for young Cherry's ears.

But shouldn't they be told to someone? At first the thought was too frightening, and she refused to let herself dwell on it. But her mind insisted on playing with it anyway, the way a person standing on the roof of a high building might play with thoughts of jumping. She could feel the idea taking hold of her.

She wondered about her motives. Was she trying to assuage her Maker at the eleventh hour? After all, she couldn't live forever, and confession might clean the slate, celestially speaking. But the God she'd come to believe in was too hard-nosed to be taken in by contrition under duress. And confession for its own sake had a mawkish quality. She'd let her record stand and take her judgment when the time came. But it hadn't yet. And while she was still present on earth—however marginally—she couldn't shake the feeling that knowing the truth might be useful somewhere, somehow, to someone. Or perhaps it was just that, good or bad, her story was all she had, and she wanted someone to know and remember it after she was gone. The idea that kept her awake at night, repeating itself over and over in her brain, was that Laurel Selene McCready was the person who should become the keeper of her particular flame. After all, Ms. McCready had already inherited the loot—and Stuart Lawrence, Jr.

Chapter Thirty-five

LAUREL

2004

T
HE OLD WATER-STAINED SUITCASE
sat on Laurel's bed. The dress and pinafore were inside, folded the way she'd found them, but she'd kept the sheet music out. The name of the song, “Beautiful Dreamer,” was familiar. But she wasn't sure she'd ever heard it.

She'd taken the suitcase home because it fascinated her so much she couldn't leave it in Garrison Cottage. What the hell did it—and its weird contents—have to do with the great Miss Myrtis? A nasty little part of her was hoping the artifacts were connected to something so heinous in the saintly lady's life that it would trash her rep for good. But there was probably some simple—and saintly—explanation.

Laurel looked down at the yellowed page in front of her. Someone had written something in the margin, in pencil, but the note had either been erased or it had faded too much to be read. She put the sheet music back into the suitcase, closed it, and put it on the floor of her closet. She'd have to ponder it later. Right now she had something more urgent to deal with. She went into her kitchen.

The power-of-attorney form Stuart Junior had given her was on her kitchen table. It had been five days since he'd asked her to sign it.

“Junior's daddy helped build the damn gardens,” she said to Patsy Cline, who had refused to go out with Peggy's mutts and was sitting at Laurel's feet in a way that was meant to let the intruders know once and for all who was the alpha dog. “He knows a hell of a lot more about them than I ever will.”

Silence from the fearless watchdog guarding her feet.

“But something about it doesn't sit right. Myrtis Garrison passes Senior on to Peggy, and then Senior passes Peggy on to Junior, and then Peggy passes Junior on to me.”

It was a system that had worked since before she was born. And if Myrtis and Peggy had been okay with it, what was her problem?

“That's the difference between a lady and me. They say
please
and
thank you
and they pass the tea. They do what's expected of them. Tell
me
what to do and I say,
Kiss my ass
. Dumb.”

There was a grunt from Patsy Cline.

“You weren't supposed to agree with me.”

Patsy yawned and closed her eyes.

“I can't put it off anymore. I'll go to his house right now and sign the damn thing in front of him. That should make his Sunday.”

She found the phone number he'd given her and dialed, but before anyone could answer, she hung up. She refolded the power-of-attorney form, marched into her bedroom, and shoved it into the drawer where she kept her underwear. “I'll take care of it tomorrow,” she said. “Today, I have a date with a peach cobbler.”

She dragged the protesting Patsy Cline outside to play with the other dogs, got the keys to the Camaro because there was no way she could picture Maggie climbing into the Viper, and took off.

Every Sunday, directly after mass, Maggie went out to the nursing home to visit her old friend Lottie. Lottie's parents, Charlie Mae and Ralph, had worked for Maggie's family and lived in a cabin on their land. Maggie and Lottie had been best friends when they were children and, in spite of race, time, sickness, and tragedy, the friendship had endured.

Six years ago, Lottie had had a stroke and had to move to the nursing home, and the Sunday visits began. For years Maggie had driven herself, with a freshly baked treat carefully cradled in a white linen towel on the passenger seat next to her. Peggy had put a stop to these trips after Maggie had a fender bender with a family of tourists who hadn't known that when Dr. Maggie's ancient Volvo was on the road you had to watch out for her tricky left side. After that, Maggie still drove herself for short runs around the town of Charles Valley, but for longer hauls, like the fifteen-mile trip to the nursing home, Peggy had taken over. Now, as with so much else that had been Peggy's, Laurel had inherited the weekly nursing-home trek.

Not that she minded it. The drive was pretty, and Maggie's baking was not to be missed. She rotated Lottie's favorite cakes—red velvet, lemon, pound, and whiskey pecan with caramel icing—with a variety of seasonal cobblers and pies.

Maggie was waiting for Laurel on her back porch. She came down the steps wearing a snazzy ensemble: cream-colored slacks, a matching blouse, and one of her new cardigans tied schoolgirl style over her shoulders. She looked relieved when she saw the Camaro.

“I'm sure that new car of yours is perfectly lovely, Doodlebug,” she said, as soon as she and the cobbler were settled in the passenger seat, “but I think I'd feel like Dale Earnhardt Junior hopping into it.” Laurel shot her a startled look and tried to make her brain grasp the idea of Dr. Maggie,
NASCAR
fan.

As usual, most of the staff and several of the residents turned up for the cobbler, and Maggie's eyes shone the way they always did when she was with Lottie. Lottie was confined to a wheelchair and her speech was limited, but Maggie managed to communicate with her just fine, holding Lottie's big stroke-gnarled hands in her small, beautifully manicured ones. There was something so connected about them, Laurel thought.

It wasn't until the visit with Lottie was over and they were heading out of the nursing home that the shit hit the fan. That was when Maggie caught sight of a young aide in the hallway.

“Grace,” she called out, “why didn't your mama go for those X-rays I ordered? When I didn't get the report, I called radiology at St. Francis, and they said she'd never come in. She needs to have—”

“She will, Dr. Maggie,” Grace said. She was in her early thirties, tall and slim, with golden-brown skin and hazel eyes. Those eyes were filled with a fear that Laurel recognized only too well. “My sister and me, we just found out about it,” Grace said nervously. “Mama didn't want to tell us because she didn't have the money, and she knew we'd try to pay—”

“Pay for X-rays? Why would she have to pay for them? Your mother's still working at the resort, isn't she?”

“Yes, ma'am.”

“All the Garrison employees have health insurance. That'll cover it.”

“No, it won't. Mama canceled hers.”

“
Canceled
it?”

“The resort has been making people pay more for their premiums—”

“I heard,” Maggie said grimly. “But I told your mother to pay whatever she had to.”

“She did. But a month ago they told everyone in housekeeping that they were going to be raising the co-pay again. It's over two hundred dollars a month, and Mama said she couldn't afford it.”

Maggie's pretty little face was red with anger. “How could you let her, Grace? With her history?”

“She didn't tell us until after she'd done it. They laid her off last winter during the slow season, right when she had to get the new propane tank for her house and she's still trying to pay that off.” There were tears in Grace's eyes now. Laurel remembered the day she first heard Sara Jayne's diagnosis, followed by the news that temporary employees at the Garrison resort—which meant her mother—didn't qualify for benefits at all.

“Reetha and I will pay for the X-rays,” Grace was saying. “It'll take us a couple of weeks—”

“No!” Maggie shouted. Then she stopped and took a deep breath. “Your mama can't wait. I'll call St. Francis on Monday and make an appointment for her. I'll talk to them, get them to hold off on the bill, or—something. Just get your mama there!”

“I will, Dr. Maggie. I'm sorry I—”

But Maggie had already started down the hall, moving so fast that Laurel had to run to keep up. Their dash ended in the parking lot outside the nursing home. Then a little ball of fury exploded next to Laurel.

“May Stuart Lawrence rot in hell!” Maggie yelled. “May he be damned and rot in hell!”

“They always do stuff like that, Maggie. Those sons of bitches at the resort and the gardens have always—” Laurel stopped. She'd just remembered who owned the resort and had a controlling vote in the gardens.

Maggie was looking at her. Clearly she'd remembered who owned the whole mess too. “Oh, Doodlebug,” she said softly, as if something tragic was unfolding in front of her.

And in that moment, Laurel made a decision. “Wait right here,” she said. And she dashed back inside the nursing home.

Grace was still standing in the hall where Maggie had left her, trying to get herself together. Laurel rushed up. “Don't worry about the X-rays,” she said.

Grace pulled back. “My sister and I will be fine,” she said politely.

“I'll take care of it. Tell them to send the bill to me. I'm Laurel McCready. I own the resort.”

“Oh, my land! You're the one Miss Peggy—”

“Yeah, I am. What's your name?”

“Grace Marshall.”

“Well, Grace, you get those X-rays and any other tests your mama has to have. And then, if it turns out she has a problem, you let me know what you need—Emory, anything. You hear?”

“But I can't—”

“I've been where you are, okay? I'm for real. You can ask Dr. Maggie. Here, let me write down my name and my phone number.”

Grace began to cry now—not just tears, big wrenching sobs. “I don't know what to say.”

“Don't worry about that. Just do what you've got to do for your mama.”

“Thank you! Oh, thank you! I've been so scared. If Mama needed . . . it can cost so much. I didn't know what we'd do.”

Feeling like Wonder Woman and Oprah and Stuart Lawrence's worst nightmare all rolled into one, Laurel hugged her. “It never should have happened. And it won't anymore. The resort is my responsibility now, and this bullshit is going to stop.” And before Grace could start thanking her again, she ran out to Maggie in the parking lot.

“Are you all right?” Maggie asked, when they were driving back from the nursing home.

“Couldn't be better.”

“Wasn't that a stop sign you just ran?”

“Sorry.” She slowed down a little. But she needed to get home. She had a phone call to make.