The Ladies of Garrison Gardens (30 page)

Looking down at the ground, he said quietly, “My father wouldn't agree with you about Roosevelt. Daddy thinks he's destroying the wage hands. The federal government pays them seventy-five percent more than we do. Who's going to work for us?”

“Maybe you'll have to start paying better.”

“And with all this talk about unions and health care and now this Social Security, Daddy says it'll cut into our profit.”

“Your family's wealthy. How much money do you need to make?”

“Daddy would say as much as we can.”

“What do you say?”

He drew in a deep breath and looked out over the field. “All this used to be farmland—
little
farms with one family working it usually. Times have been hard around here for a long time, even before the Depression.” He looked at her and looked away quickly. He was embarrassed by what he was about to say. “Daddy started picking up the land for cheap way back. Whenever some farmer was going broke, we'd buy him out. We never paid what the land was worth. When cotton went down to five cents a pound, that was when we really closed in. Daddy didn't do the buying himself since the farmers would have held out for a higher price; he had agents working for him. I was in charge. We'd go in and scare the hell out of the man—” He stopped, but he still couldn't look at her. “Sorry about my language.”

“Don't be.”

“A couple of times it was a woman,” he went on. “A widow, sometimes with kids. I forced them out of their homes too. This hill where we're sitting? There used to be a house on it; it wasn't more than a shack really. An old man lived in it. His vegetable garden was right over there; that's his peach tree. When I came to give him his money, he cried. He had these big old hands, all knotty and scraped up—” He stopped again. His eyes were bright as he looked down at the ground. She wanted to put her arms around him. Instead, she reached out and took his hand.

“I think . . . I
believe
that if you've done something you wish you hadn't, you can always find a way to make up for it,” she said.

He finally turned and looked at her. “Daddy wants to retire, and he's going to put me in charge of running the gardens and the resort. He says it's time for me to show what I'm made of.” He was still looking at her; she had a feeling he was testing her in some way. “I'm sorry to be so serious on a pretty morning, but after the way you took up for Li'l Bit last night, and then when you were talking about the New Deal and all—well, I just wanted to tell you this.”

He had been testing her, and even though she'd never be seeing him again she wanted desperately to pass the test. She tried to think of some answer that would be wise and clever, but in the end she just told him what she felt. “I'm flattered that you told me,” she said. “Thank you.”

His smile seemed to burst over his whole face. “See there? No other girl I know would have said that.”

She'd passed.

He had asked for her address in Atlanta, but she wouldn't give it to him. However, one week after she left Charles Valley, he showed up at her door with a big bunch of flowers he'd picked at Garrison Gardens.

“Drove them up to Atlanta in a bucket of water in the front seat of my roadster,” he said, as he held them out to her.

When someone had gone to all that trouble to bring you the most beautiful bouquet you've ever seen, you couldn't tell him to take it back. And you couldn't accept flowers from a man and leave him standing on your doorstep. She let him come in. Just this once.

“How did you know where to find me?” she asked.

“Your friend Bonnie. She didn't want to tell me.”

“Really. I wonder why?”

“I think you shocked her at the dinner table with your views on our president.”

“Why would that keep her from telling you where I live?”

“She was protecting me, of course. Bonnie is a dear family friend. Fortunately, I'm very persuasive.”

Iva Claire didn't like the way he said
dear
. She thought Bonnie was a jealous little cat who probably wanted him for herself.

“The thing is,” he went on, “when you and Li'l Bit were talking about FDR, that's when I knew you were the right one for me.”

She hadn't heard him properly. “What did you say?”

“I said, I know Myrtis Benedict is the girl for me.”

“Dalton, I'm not good at flirting—”

“I am. Very good. But that's not what I'm doing now. I've finally met a girl I want to talk to for the rest of my life.” Dalton's smile faded. “I don't want to be like my daddy, Myrtis. I don't want to take people's homes when they're down on their luck, bully my friends, and never even bother to hide my girlfriends because I know my wife won't stand up to me.”

“If you don't want to, then you won't.”

He didn't laugh, or even smile. “Don't be so sure. When I take over the business I'm going to need someone special with me. The moment you opened your mouth I knew you were different.”

She had to stop him. “Dalton, I like you. And I'm sure we'll always be friends—”

“But, I want to kiss you too—more than I've wanted to kiss any other girl I've known.”

“Oh.”

“The only way out is for you to marry me.”

“You . . . just met me,” she stammered.

“But I'll never do better, so what's the use of waiting? I can court you for months or years if you want, but it won't change anything.” He was smiling, but his brown eyes were anxious.

“Dalton—”

“If you don't think you could love me, maybe you could think of it as saving me?”

He was so serious. And so sweet. And so handsome. “Saving you from what?”

“Myself. I want to do right at the gardens and the resort. I want to make it a good place for people to work. But Daddy'll start going at me about keeping costs down, and”—he paused—“I'm not a strong person, Myrtis. I'm not like you.”

“You don't know what I'm like. You don't know me.”

That made him smile. “Yes, I do. I may not be good in business like Daddy, and the Lord knows I wasn't much for studying in school, but I know about people. I know what kind of person you are.”

I hope not.

“There's nothing you and I couldn't do together, Myrtis,” he said, his eyes shining. “We'll be a great team.”

The sad part was, he was right. With his heart and her backbone they would be unbeatable.

“If you come with me, we can do so much good. And I'll make you love me one day, I promise.”

But she couldn't say yes.

He came back the next week. This time he didn't have flowers, and he kissed her before she had a chance to protest. She'd never been kissed before, and she wanted it to go on and on. She wanted him to keep kissing her so she'd never think again. But he broke away.

“I should have done that ages ago,” he said, his voice ragged.

It took her awhile to catch her breath. “There are things about me you don't know,” she said, which was stupid, and risky, but she didn't care.

“That's okay,” he said softly.

“I'm not going to tell you what they are. But I can't marry you. And you have to go now.”

But instead of leaving he brushed a wisp of hair away from her cheek and said, “You lived away from home for a lot of years, without your parents or any family around. You were on your own, and things can happen. I understand. I wasn't exactly an angel when I was on my own at college.”

He was so gentle. She had to make him leave, but he was still smoothing her hair.

“I don't care what you did before I met you,” he said. “I know the girl I see in front of me right now, and that's all I need.” He took her face in his hands and forced her to look up at him. “I promise you I'll never ask you anything you don't want to talk about.” She believed him. Partly because he was kind and thoughtful, and partly because she knew he would never want to hear anything unpleasant or difficult.

“If you don't marry him, I'll never forgive you,” Tassie said over the telephone. Her voice sounded weary and hard. “One of us should be happy, for Christ's sake.”

“Tassie, are you okay?”

“I'll be fine as soon as I hear you're going to marry Dalton Garrison.”

“It's not that simple.”

“If you won't, what did we do it all for? What was the point, if you're going to be alone and miserable until you die?”

“Tassie, I can't.”

“Why not? You love him. I can tell that all the way out here in California.”

“You know why.”

“Are you afraid you'll slip up? You've been Myrtis Benedict for three years. You know what you're doing.”

“It's not that. I can't lie to him.”

“It's not a lie anymore. You're the only Myrtis there is.” She paused. Iva Claire could feel her gathering her thoughts. “When you told me you wanted to pull this switch, I didn't think you could do it. Well, you have. But you've been . . . trapped. You had all those ideas about making a difference, but you haven't done anything. Because you can't, on your own. You need him.”

She did. In so many ways. “If I did marry him—and I'm saying if—do you have any idea of the kind of wedding I'd have to have? The Benedicts and the Garrisons are important down here. There'll be hundreds of people.”

“You can get away with it for one day.”

“There'll be relatives I'd have to invite. There are a couple of Benedict great-aunts, and an uncle who lives somewhere in the West, and cousins. And God only knows about Myrtis's mother's family.”

“Have any of them ever come to see you or written to you?”

“Someone named Great-aunt Weedie invited me to tea in Charleston. I never went and she never asked again.”

“So they don't care about you.”

“My father didn't like his family or his wife's family, and none of them liked him.”

“Then you're safe. If there's that much bad blood, they won't show up.”

“But what if they do? This is going to be the wedding of the year. What about my father's old friends? He had a lot of them, and they'll be sure to come. All it will take is one person who knows something I don't—something that happened years ago.”

“You're going to be the bride at the wedding of the year. No one will expect you to remember your own name.”

“You make it sound like nothing can go wrong.”

“Something can always go wrong. But you can't play it safe, Myrtis. The time for that is over.”

“Myrtis?” It sounded strange coming from Tassie, and she wasn't sure she liked it. “You don't call me Myrtis.”

“I'm starting now.”

“I need someone in my life who remembers Iva Claire.”

“No, you don't. Not anymore. Because you're going to be Myrtis Garrison.”

“I didn't say—”

“Good night, Myrtis.”

It took her three more weeks to say yes. And when she told Dalton and saw the look on his face, she knew what it meant to be happy.

For a wedding present, Grady Garrison gave the engaged couple a piece of land at the tip of a pie-shaped wedge in the middle of Highway 22, and Dalton told her to build the home of her dreams there. She designed a mansion made of logs with four big beautiful skylights and called it Garrison Cottage, although she had much grander plans for it than the name implied. She saw it as a place where she and Dalton would invite the powerful and the thoughtful writers or professors—maybe even a senator or a governor. Maybe even the president. Important people would talk about important ideas in her new home. Great things would happen at Garrison Cottage.

She wanted to have modern furniture designed for the entire place, but she was afraid it would seem strange if she didn't take the Benedict antiques with her. So the treasures her father's people had been collecting and hoarding for generations were hauled out of the house in Beneville to furnish the bedrooms on the second floor. She even brought the big canopy bed to Charles Valley. And if she wished she could have left all the heavy furniture behind, with its heavier history . . .

Don't think about that. You have to play the part, and you need the props.

The truth was, she wasn't thinking about much of anything. She was so happy to be leaving Atlanta behind her. In a few months she'd be living in Charles Valley with Dalton, helping him do all the good things he'd dreamed of. They'd be a team, as he'd said, and maybe in time she could start to see herself the way he did. Charles Valley would be another step farther away from Beneville.

But first she had to survive her wedding, and the whirlwind that would precede it. Dalton wanted a big party. Miss Lucy, Dalton's mama, was delighted to help the bride plan one, and Mr. Jenkins not only gave her a blank check to pay for it but offered to give her away. If any of them thought it was strange that Myrtis Benedict wanted to be married in Atlanta instead of in Beneville they didn't say so. Her maid of honor was Bonnie Taylor Talbot, whose only real talent was shopping, and together they purchased a trousseau with enough dresses, suits, coats, hats, shoes, and lingerie to last any woman a lifetime.

Her future in-laws seemed to know hundreds of people, all of whom wanted to entertain young Dalton and his fiancée. Even her acquaintances from Atlanta wanted to celebrate the upcoming nuptials. She tried to avoid the showers and luncheons with girls she'd never liked, but there was no way to talk Dalton out of accepting all the invitations to dinners, cocktail parties, and dances thrown in their honor. There was a diamond ring that cost more than she wanted to know, sparkling on her finger. She managed to get through all the fuss and be happy because she knew Dalton loved her. And because Charles Valley was waiting for her.

Chapter Sixty-five

MRS. RAIN

2004

S
HE LOOKED
at what she'd just written and thought back to that brief time when her friend was so happy. The joy had come through the pages of her letters and was in her voice on the phone hundreds of miles away. For a little while she'd had so much hope.

Mrs. Rain closed her eyes. It was hard to remember that good time because of what had followed. She'd been so sure she could write about it—the sad part—but maybe she couldn't. Maybe she should just rip up the damn letter. No one would know if she did. It wasn't like anyone had asked her to beat herself up reliving things she'd spent so long trying to forget. So what if it would help Laurel Selene McCready to know the truth?

“Mrs. Rain regrets that she is unable to fix Ms. McCready's life. Mrs. Rain is old and tired and doesn't feel like raking up old hurts. She has retired.”

But of course she hadn't retired—not yet. And raking up old hurts could be good for the soul, if someone else could make use of them. Wasn't that the real reason she wanted to fix Ms. McCready's life? So she could fix her own?

She bent over her pad of yellow paper and continued with her story.

And while Iva Claire—only I called her Myrtis by then—was falling in love, what about me? What was I doing all that time? Making the rounds and getting nowhere, that's what. I could afford to take lessons in acting and speech—to this day I talk half cracker and half Lady Astor—but it never worked. I still don't know why. There was a time when I told myself it was because of what happened that night in Beneville. After that, I never felt young the way I had before. But the truth was, by the time it happened I'd already gotten too old to be cast as a kid. Maybe that was what was wrong. Maybe I was one of those child performers who can't pull it off when they get older. Or maybe it was just that I was a vaudevillian, and once vaudeville was finished so was I. All I know is, I hit my peak with Lily and Iva Claire doing the Small Time around the country and I never could top that.

What made it worse for me was I didn't have to face the truth. Because of the money I was getting, I was able to hang on long past the time when I should have quit. But maybe I would have hung on anyway—even without the money. Who knows?

All I can tell you is that while the wedding of the year was being planned in Atlanta, I was miserable out in California. I wanted to go back east. I wanted to see Iva Claire—Myrtis—get married. And when I said that, I caused a catastrophe.