The Ladies of Garrison Gardens (7 page)

Chapter Ten

I
F THE GUY
at the Chevy dealership thought Laurel was strange for wanting her Camaro back, a check for twice what the parts could ever be worth quickly changed his mind. Mercifully she didn't do anything really embarrassing like kiss the car keys when he gave them to her. She handed them to Perry and drove the Viper home behind him.

Laurel lived in a cabin that had been in her family for generations—it sat, inconveniently for the Garrisons, in the middle of the Garrison Nature Preserve across the highway from Li'l Bit's antebellum home. As Laurel followed Perry up the dirt road that led to her little house, the sound of frantic barking greeted them. Peggy's adoptees were hungry.

Peggy had rescued stray dogs, “my furry babies,” she called them, and after she died Laurel had moved the poor things—all ten of them—to her own place because she couldn't face going over to Garrison Cottage to feed them. Now the dogs were crammed into her tiny two-room house, where they exchanged canine hostilities with Patsy Cline, the stray Peggy had once foisted off on Laurel.

Perry had already gotten out of the Camaro and was waiting for her when she drove up. As she opened her front door it occurred to her that this was the first time he'd ever been to her home. And it was the first time she'd been alone with him for any length of time—without talking about medications or nursing schedules—since he'd been old enough to shave. Fortunately, before she could start feeling weird, the dogs descended on them, and for the next half hour he helped her fill food and water bowls, let the dogs in and out of the yard she'd fenced in for Patsy, scratch tummies, and head off a potential fight.

“Your dog doesn't seem to like the others much,” he remarked.

“Patsy's strange.”

The dog wasn't the only one. Now that the canine contingent was no longer demanding her attention, she was feeling weird again. The Wiener, damn him, seemed perfectly comfortable. Of course it wasn't his turf that was being invaded, or his family history that was on display. She snuck a quick look over at the four shelves she'd put up in the center of her living room wall, defiantly placing them where they could not be missed. On those shelves was a collection of frayed, ancient books. There were paperbacks and hardcovers, old how-to manuals, murder mysteries,
Reader's Digest
Best of the Year anthologies, one-time potboilers like
Valley of the Dolls
, and classics like
The Complete Works of Shakespeare
all jumbled together. These books were the only inheritance she'd ever had from her father. He'd bought them at a garage sale before he was killed a few months before she was born. Not knowing if she was going to be a boy or a girl, he'd printed the name
BABY MERRICK
in pencil in a large childish scrawl on the first page of each book. Below that, in her own prissy penmanship, Laurel had written
Laurel Selene McCready
when she was seven. From everything she'd heard about her father, the man had never read a book in his life, but he'd wanted her to have these and she would probably insist on being buried with them. To hell with what anyone had to say about her notorious daddy.

There was one more relic of her childhood in this room. On the floor, propped up against the corner, was her ma's guitar. Drunk or sober, Sara Jayne could always make music, and no matter how mad Laurel got at her memory she could no more toss the guitar than she could ditch the books. The damn thing would probably be buried with her too.

“Sara Jayne sure could sing.” The Wiener was reading her mind again.

“When did you ever hear her?” The places where her ma did most of her singing would have been off limits for the young impressionable Wiener.

“Once, when you were away at college. She came into Daddy's bar and sang with Denny and the boys the way you used to. I think she did it because she missed you.”

It was funny the way someone could say something that would get you in the gut, and they'd never know it. Or did he? For a brief moment she flashed back to the pudgy nine-year-old Wiener, who always seemed to be watching her. The present-day Wiener moved to her sofa and sat on it, sprawling out his long denim-clad legs like he was at home.

“Do you ever wear anything but jeans?” she asked.

“It's a habit I got into up north. Hanging on to my redneck cred.”

“Did you like it up there?”

“I got a good education, good training, it was nice to get away from home. Yeah, I liked it.”

“Why the hell did you come back?”

He was about to answer her but something flickered in his eyes and he changed his mind. “Why did you?” he asked. “You went away to college. I remember when you left.”

“To Jackson State. I had a scholarship—everything covered,” she said, and then could have kicked herself. Mentioning the scholarship was beyond pathetic. “Ma got sick, so I had to come back to take care of her. But it was okay. She said I'd never make it at college, and she was probably right,”

“I'm sorry, Laurel.” He really was. She could tell.

“Hey, I wouldn't want to break a fine old family tradition of screwing up.” There had been a lot more to it all than that, but she'd never told anyone—not even Denny—about it. Still, if Wiener were to ask her the right questions, right now, this minute, maybe she would. She waited, but he didn't. Which, she told herself, was just as well.

“Your turn,” she said. “Why did you come back?”

He paused again, but this time he decided to say it. “Well, there's this girl.”

There was a tiny pang of regret somewhere in her stomach and a much bigger pang of relief.

“You came back home for some girl you knew in high school?”

“Earlier than that.”

Laurel ran through a list of the girls his age who had stayed in town, looking for one spectacular enough to make him return to Charles Valley. She came up empty. “She must be a knockout.”

He nodded enthusiastically. “She's beautiful, and she's very smart. . . .”

The litany was starting to piss her off. “Does she have a name?”

“Laurel.”

“Yes?”

“No. Her name is Laurel Selene McCready.”

He hadn't said that. And if he had said it, it didn't mean what she thought it meant. And if it did mean what she thought it meant, if she ignored it, it would go away. She got up and headed for the kitchen. “Can I get you something to drink?” she asked. “I've only got sweet tea in the fridge, but I can make up some without sugar if you'd like.”

He wasn't going to let her dodge it. He was going to say
You have to deal with this
. She knew it. What he said was, “Thanks, but I should probably get back to my car.” He was going to let her dodge it. He
was
still a child.

“Right,” she heard herself say. “You need to get your rest. You have to get up early tomorrow, and . . .” He nodded and stood up, unfolding long limbs with an athlete's grace; where had he learned to move like that? “I'll get the car keys,” she finished lamely.

After a silent drive that felt awkward as hell to Laurel although it didn't seem to bother Perry—the little creep—they finally pulled into the Sportsman's Grill parking lot. Perry took her packages out of his car and put them in her front seat.

“Are you really going to take these back?” he asked.

“Probably.”

He started to say something and stopped.

“Thank you for the help,” she said.

“Sure.”

Before he could get into his own car, she peeled out. She could feel him watching her.

Chapter Eleven

W
HEN LAUREL GOT HOME,
she carried the pile of presents into her bedroom, where she closed the door over the protests of the dogs and spread her loot out on her bed. And thought about gifts. And the story she'd almost told Perry.

The night before Laurel was leaving for Jackson State, her ma had come into the living room where she was packing. Sara Jayne lit a cigarette and watched for a while. “Think you're getting out, don't you, college girl?” she said. Her voice had the edge that said tonight's drunk would be a mean one. “You're going to walk out of here and get your hot shot degree, and you'll never be back. But it doesn't work like that with us. You think I didn't want more than the shit life I had? You think I wanted to screw up? But that's what we do, college girl. We always screw up.” And then, having delivered those words of maternal wisdom, she took off for the night.

The next morning, Laurel figured she'd get out of the house before Sara Jayne was awake. But as she finished loading up her car, her mother appeared on the porch behind her looking shaky and red-eyed, in the way Laurel knew only too well. Watching Sara Jayne standing there, Laurel had to admit that she would have done anything to get away from Charles Valley and her.

“I know you think I'm a bitch for what I said last night,” Sara Jayne said. “I just don't want you to be disappointed.” Which was so stunningly close to an apology that in spite of herself Laurel went back up to the cabin to give her a hug. “Take care, Ma,” she said.

“You'll be back,” Sara Jayne whispered.

For the first time, Laurel heard the fear in her ma's voice and understood that her mother didn't want Laurel to go because she was terrified to be on her own.

Her ma wasn't right about college—not totally. Laurel hadn't screwed up, but it hadn't been the new start she'd been dreaming of either. The students in her classes seemed young, in ways she had never been. She missed Charles Valley, Denny, and the Sportsman's Grill where the bartender slipped her illegal beers when she sang with Denny's band.

Still, she stayed in school, and she called Sara Jayne once a week. It was one of the few expenses she allowed herself. She made the calls every Friday night at seven, and to her surprise Sara Jayne was always there, even though Friday had always been her big night for partying. Not only was Sara Jayne at home, but she sounded pleased to hear Laurel's voice. There were other signs of change too. Sara Jayne had started waitressing at one of the restaurants at the Garrison resort, and she seemed to be sticking with the job. In spite of reason, history, and all her instincts for self-preservation, Laurel found herself hoping. She told herself it was just the distance and homesickness, but the part of her brain that had always been labeled
sucker
where her ma was concerned wouldn't listen.

So one Friday night, after Sara Jayne talked about a rich lady who had come into the restaurant wearing a string of pearls exactly like Joan Collins on
Dynasty
, Laurel decided to risk buying a Christmas present. It was something she hadn't done since her ma whipped her with a belt years ago for trying to give her a surprise birthday party.

There was a jewelry store near the college, where she ran up a whopping $178 on her brand-new credit card for a pearl necklace the guy swore was real, although it was cultured. For the first time in her frugal life she was in debt, but the small scrap of hope demanded it.

She wrapped the jewelry box in red-and-gold paper three times before she got the creases right and spent hours looking for a card before she finally settled on one with a cat dressed like Santa Claus on it. She drove home with the pearls on the seat next to her. About twenty miles outside Charles Valley her teeth started chattering. About ten miles out of town she began holding a conversation with Sara Jayne.

“You're going to hate those damn pearls, aren't you?” she berated her absent mother. “Or something else will go wrong, something I shouldn't have done or should have done. Because we can't have a good Christmas, can we? There is no way you could just smile and like what I've given you.” But the scrap of hope—and her sucker's brain—kept her driving.

When she got home, Sara Jayne wasn't there. She knew Laurel was coming home because Laurel had repeated the time and date of her arrival every Friday for a month. But Sara Jayne wasn't there. Laurel's teeth stopped chattering. And she felt a sour little smile spread over her mouth. And in spite of how much a part of her wanted to cry, another bigger part of her was saying
I told you so
.

As she went through the empty house she thought of all the scenarios for a disastrous Christmas that she'd been imagining on the drive home. The one thing she hadn't anticipated was a no-show. You really had to hand it to her ma.

Sara Jayne didn't turn up for the next three days. On the morning of the fourth day, December 23, Laurel placed the jewelry box and the card on Sara Jayne's dresser and went back to college to spend the holiday alone in the room she was renting from a third-year biology student.

Later on, Laurel would piece it together and realize that while she was driving home to Charles Valley, Sara Jayne was getting her diagnosis. And while Laurel sat in the empty little house waiting, Sara Jayne was coping with her terror the only way she knew how. But by the time she figured out the sequence of events, Laurel had already left school, and Sara Jayne was in the hospital, and their new lives centered around bedpans, and IV drips, and finding the right kind of wipes to moisten cracked lips, and new phrases like
pain management
and
do not resuscitate.

Then came the night when the floor nurse called to say Laurel should get herself back to the hospital immediately. Laurel walked into her mother's darkened room and saw something gleaming on Sara Jayne's arm. The pearls had been twisted around her wrist.

“The doctor wouldn't let us put them around her neck,” the nurse said. “But she insisted on wearing them, so we made them into a bracelet.” Two hours later, Sara Jayne died.

Chapter Twelve

T
HE NEXT MORNING
Laurel got up early, before Li'l Bit and Maggie were awake, and went to Li'l Bit's house. She left the entire mountain of glossy boxes and bags on Li'l Bit's front porch and slipped away.

For the next few hours she told herself she was not in hiding. She had reading to do. On Tuesday night she was going to have supper with the Garrison lawyer, who was now her lawyer. His name was Stuart Lawrence, Jr., and he had billed the evening that lay ahead of her as a
little chat
. If that wasn't scary enough, his secretary had sent her an autographed copy of the book he'd written and self-published about the resort and the gardens. It sold in the Garrison gift shop for an outrageous sum and it featured a picture of Stuart Junior with his father, Stuart Senior, who had been the Garrison lawyer before him. Clearly, she had to read the book. That was the only reason she was staying home instead of going over to see how Li'l Bit and Maggie were doing, she told herself.

After forty-five minutes of Junior's clunky prose, she gave up and drove across the highway to Li'l Bit's.

She heard the music as soon as she started down the driveway. One of Li'l Bit's Italian operas was blasting away, reaching decibel levels that were way beyond the capacity of her old phonograph. Laurel stopped her car and got out as Li'l Bit, who had been sitting on the porch, came down the steps and made a beeline for her.

“Do you hear how glorious?” she demanded in her high voice. Big loopy melodies swooped through the air. Li'l Bit's face was pink and glowing, and her hair was flying out of its net. “Do you hear how perfect?” Li'l Bit hugged Laurel. “You shouldn't have done it,” she shouted happily above the music, “but I'm so glad you did! I'm such an old stick-in-the-mud, I never would have gotten one of those machines for myself, and just listen!” She stood still, letting the sound wash over her like a dog under a sprinkler on a hot day. “I'm truly in your debt, Laurel.”

And the only thing Laurel could think to say was, “How did you get it hooked up so fast?”

“Perry did it. He came over early this morning. I thought you'd asked him to,” Li'l Bit said.

Before she could find out more, Maggie appeared from inside the house wearing the rose brocade coat. She saw Laurel and blew her a kiss; then she did a little turn, showing off the shimmering pink silk lining like a runway model. She finished with a slightly arthritic curtsy.

The opera was blasting, Maggie and Li'l Bit were both laughing, thrilled with their loot, and she'd made it happen. She realized she was getting a glimpse of what having the Garrison money could mean. And for the first time since she sat in Stuart Junior's office and heard that Peggy had turned her into the Garrison heiress, Laurel felt like everything was going to be okay.