Into the Garden Read online

  Misty gaped.

  "Don't make it so obvious," Star told her. She peered, too. "Grease balls," she decided. She smiled at Jade. "They're poor white trash, honey."

  "I know, but it's fun to see what they'll do."

  My heart started to pound because one of them did get up and start toward us. He looked like he was in his mid- twenties at least.

  "Well, now:' he said, "my buddy Carl and I were just admiring how you all get along so well. We thought now here's a group of young women who've got it together; cool, mature, good looking, fine representatives of the better sex. We were wondering if we might interest you in attending a party tonight. It's going to be great. We've got a live band and--"

  "Just a minute," Jade said. She dipped into her purse and produced a small leather-covered notepad. I held my breath. She seemed to be seriously

  considering it. Misty sat with a grin on her face and Star just stared at Jade.

  "Oh, I'm sorry," she said. "We're booked tonight. As a matter of fact, we're booked for the rest of our lives. But thanks."

  He laughed.

  "You sure?" he said.

  "What are you, deaf or stupid?" Star asked him.

  His smile faded. He looked back at his friend who was laughing at him, which made his face a darker crimson.

  "Too bad," he said. "You're missing a good time."

  Star continued to glare at him and he left the table to return to his buddy. Then Star broke the tension by laughing and so did Jade and Misty.

  "He was cute," lade confessed.

  "So's a baby rat:' Star said.

  "How do you know who's right and who's wrong for you?" I asked.

  They both looked at me.

  "You'll know," Star said. "By the time we're finished with you:'

  They laughed again. I smiled and thought, I've got real friends, finally, and ironically, all because Geraldine died and left me alone. Was it wrong for something so good to come from something so bad? I was too nervous to care and maybe that was the biggest mistake of all.

  9 Skeletons Out of the Closet

  The telephone was ringing when we entered the house. I was holding open the door so the girls could carry in all the boxes, but I managed to get to the phone in time. The girls hurried to gather around me, anxious to hear who was calling. Was it the bank again?

  "Hello?" I said, looking at them. After a moment I swallowed hard and said, "Just a minute, Doctor Marlowe."

  I put my hand over the mouthpiece.

  "She wants to talk to Geraldine. What will I do? What should I say?"

  "Tell her your mother said she has nothing to

  say to her," Jade dictated. "Go on," she urged, "and

  make it sound truthful."

  I took a breath and did what she suggested. "I'm sorry, but she won't come to the phone,

  Doctor Marlowe. She has nothing to say to you." That wasn't really a lie, I thought. She has

  nothing to say to anyone.

  "She's not doing the right thing, Cathy. You

  need your follow-up visit. There are too many loose ends," Doctor Marlowe insisted. She sounded like she wasn't going to be satisfied until she spoke to

  Geraldine.

  "I'll speak to her about it, Doctor Marlowe," I

  promised, "and call you as soon as I can."

  "You know I'm right, Cathy. We should do

  what's best for you." I thought she was going to end

  the conversation but then at the last minute she spoke

  again. "I understand you had some sort of an

  accident?"

  "I'm fine," I said, maybe too quickly because

  there was a long pause.

  "Have you seen or heard from the other girls?"

  she asked. The tone of her voice suggested that she

  already knew the answer.

  "Yes, we've been in touch with each other," I

  admitted.

  "I'm happy about that. I really do think you're

  all good for each other. Please don't let too much time

  go by before I hear from--you," she urged.

  "I won't, Doctor Marlowe. Thank you for

  calling," I said and hung up.

  "Well?" Star asked.

  "I don't know. She sounded like she believed

  me. She wants me to convince Geraldine I should

  return for a follow- up and call her soon."

  Jade looked thoughtful.

  "Cat could go back to see her, pretend she's

  convinced her mother to let her go. Maybe that would

  end it," she mused aloud.

  "Too dangerous now," Star said. "You know

  how smart Doctor Marlowe is. She'll take one look at

  Cat and know everything. She's bound to ask difficult

  questions."

  "Maybe she won't call again," Misty hoped. "We'll stall as long as we can," Jade agreed, but

  a dark cloud of concern had moved in over our

  excitement, threatening to rain reality down on our

  efforts to create an oasis of fantasy in this desert of

  hard, sad times.

  "I'm getting started on the redecorating," Misty

  declared. "I refuse to let anything depress me." She attacked the project with her characteristic

  explosion of energy. Before long, we were all

  contributing in one way or another. Star and Jade

  rearranged furniture in the living room while I

  hobbled along beside Misty and helped her hang

  pictures and posters. She also set up the new CD

  player and the speakers. While we worked, we

  listened to the new CD's we bought and for the first time ever, rock music flowed through this house. Whenever Jade and Star passed Misty and me in the hallway, they were singing and dancing, and before long, we were all in the hallway, even me with my

  cast, singing, swinging, and swaying to the rhythms "I can't wait for our first party!" Misty cried. "Who will we invite?" I wondered aloud. "We'll be careful and take great care about who

  we choose," Jade said. "We should discuss every

  suggestion and make a rule we all have to accept

  anyone someone suggests, okay?"

  "How are we going to do that?" Star asked. "I

  don't know your friends and you don't know mine." "We'll talk about them and do the best we can,"

  Jade insisted.

  "Let's not worry so much about everything,"

  Misty piped up. "Let's just have fun for a change." "Hmm," Star grunted. She looked at me and

  then shook her head. "Don't worry about Doctor

  Marlowe; don't worry about the bank. Don't worry

  about this and don't worry about that. Maybe we

  should be calling ourselves the OWW's then, Orphans

  Without Worries."

  Misty laughed. Star looked at Jade and then

  they both laughed, too. It was good; it was good to hear that sound in this house, a sound so alien to my home, I was always taken by surprise whenever I

  heard it here.

  Our work continued. On the way back from the

  mall, we had stopped at a house and garden supply

  store where Star chose some plants and bushes to

  cover the grave while Misty and Jade picked out the

  paint for my room. We bought all the rollers and pans,

  too. Then Misty said we should think about painting

  the hallways as well. We talked about doing

  something with the house lighting. Geraldine always

  kept it dim, the fixtures loaded with low wattage bulbs

  to save on energy costs. Misty wanted us to buy some

  tinted bulbs, but Star thought it would make the house

  look too much like a bordello. In the end we agreed

  on a lighter shade of blue for the hallways and Misty,

  who seemed inexhinstible, decided to start on that

/>   while Star went out back to finish dressing up

  Geraldine's grave with the plants and bushes we had

  purchased. We were going to hang my new curtains,

  too, before the end of the day.

  Jade was the first to grow tired of the work and

  began to complain about being hungry so we planned

  what we would order in from the nearest Chinese

  restaurant. Then they each called home to say they were staying at my house for dinner. Only Star's Granny was actually home to receive the call. Jade's mother was at a dinner meeting already and Misty's mother had left word with her answering service that

  she was going to a movie with one of her girlfriends. "I thought you were getting permission to stay

  with her overnight anyway," Star reminded Misty. "I was. I mean I will. I thought it would be

  easier to ask from here and not have to answer any

  questions about it," she explained.

  'Well, Granny said I can stay for dinner," Star

  declared, and then looked to me, "but only if you

  promise to come to our house for one of her homecooked meals. I told her you would and she said

  tomorrow night. One thing about my granny, she

  doesn't dwell in the world of fluff. None of this 'we'll

  do lunch or dinner' stuff. If you say you will, she pins

  you down to being real. You can stay over, too," she

  added.

  Jade and Misty both nodded with looks in their

  eyes that told me how much they wished they lived in

  Granny's world rather than their own.

  "Do you have anything to drink here?" Jade

  suddenly asked. It was as if just the suggestion of

  something dark and unpleasant had to be kept out any

  way possible.

  Misty's eyes widened. She looked clownish.

  Her cheeks had dabs of blue paint on them and there

  was a streak under her chin.

  "Yeah, something to drink. That's a real good

  idea," she seconded.

  "Drink? You mean, alcohol?" I asked Jade. "I know you have milk and cookies," Jade

  quipped.

  "Oh. I think there's some liquor in the pantry," I

  said. "I don't know what it is. My father was the only

  one who drank it."

  Jade went to look and returned with the report

  that we had half a bottle of vodka and nearly a full

  bottle of gin. She had the vodka in hand.

  "I'll make everyone screwdrivers," she

  announced, "and we'll relax before dinner."

  Misty went to wash up and I called in our

  dinner order, putting it on the charge card. All the

  shopping, the work, the music, and laughs really had

  made me feel better. Not once during the day had I

  had a chance to relive the night before. As long as we

  kept occupied and excited, we didn't dwell on what

  we had done and what it all meant. Bigger questions

  like how would we manage to continue all this once school had begun again and we were all occupied with our own little worlds didn't even come up. For now, we were all on a roller coaster and no one wanted to

  do or say anything that might bring us to a dead stop. After Misty returned from cleaning her hands

  and face, we gathered in the rearranged living room. I

  had to admit it looked brighter and gave the

  impression of being bigger by not separating the

  chairs as far from the sofa. We pulled the curtains

  fully open and let in the twilight, which threw a hazy

  glow of pink and yellow over the otherwise dull

  brown walls. Star and Jade sat on the sofa while Misty

  and I chose the easy chairs. It was when we had

  stopped and relaxed that we all began to feel the

  fatigue settle in. We sat there quietly for a few

  moments, sipping the drinks. I didn't taste the vodka,

  but I knew from my previous bad experience of

  drinking rum and Cokes that it can sneak up on you. "Did you read any more of your real mother's

  letters to you?" Jade asked me.

  "No. I was too tired last night."

  "What did she tell you in the first letter besides

  the stuff about your trust fund?"

  "Not that much," I said. "She made it sound like

  she wasn't in love with her husband, Grandpa Franklin. She said she arranged for Geraldine to adopt me so that I would be close to her always, to keep me

  in the family."

  "Some family," Star muttered.

  "She found another letter in Geraldine's

  pocketbook today, too," Jade told Star and Misty, who

  sipped their drinks and looked at me with interest.

  "An apology or something, right?"

  "Yes," I said. I reached into my pocket and

  produced the letter. "She doesn't say exactly who my

  real father is, but she suggests Geraldine loved him

  and maybe wanted him to be her husband?'

  "So it was probably someone younger than your

  real mother if Geraldine was interested in him too,"

  Jade conjectured.

  "Maybe?' Star said. "Though Geraldine could

  have been in love with someone's grandfather, too, the

  way she thought."

  "Actually, the letter suggests that my real father

  was older than Geraldine," I added,

  "Do you think your father's name is in the other

  letters then?" Misty asked.

  I shrugged.

  "How can you be so calm about it? Don't you

  want to know who he is?" she asked.

  "Sure she does," Jade answered for me, "but

  you should know from our experiences at Doctor

  Marlowe's that we don't just rush headlong into any of

  this. It's too traumatic."

  "But maybe when she finds out, she can go to

  him and maybe he'll want her to move in with him

  and be his daughter finally," Misty said in her dreamy

  tone of voice again. Actually, it sounded more like

  something she wished for herself.

  Star shook her head.

  "You do live in Never-Never Land, don't you?

  That's the last thing her real father wants to happen.

  He's probably got his own family and wife and how

  do you think they'll feel learning about Cathy, huh?" "Oh," Misty said. Then she smiled. "So what?

  We're here now. You don't need anyone else. Still,"

  she said after a moment, "if it was me who didn't

  know who my real father was and I had a chance to

  find out, I'd be very excited and anxious to do it. I

  wouldn't wait."

  "Cat isn't you," Star said. "So shut up about it

  already." Misty looked glum for a moment and then

  brightened. "Let's talk about our first party. When

  should we have it?" she asked.

  "We're having it now?' Star said.

  "No, I mean with boys," Misty insisted. Star looked at Jade.

  "Not until we've got everything the way we

  want it," Jade said, as if it was the most obvious fact

  of all. "When the time comes, we'll tell whomever we

  all decide to invite that Cathy's mother has gone away

  for the day and we have the house."

  "We don't want to invite too many people," Star

  cautioned, "and we better be sure no one makes it

  sound like an open party or we'll get all sorts of

  riffraff."

  "Let's just invite boys. Four of them," Jade

  suggested. "Who needs any more competition, not

  that I'm afraid o
f it or anything."

  Star laughed and drank some more of her

  screwdriver. "I'm not! It's just ... not prudent to invite

  other girls at this time," Jade insisted.

  "Prudent? I like that. What do you think, Cat?

  Should we just invite boys?" she teased. "Is that

  prudent?"

  "I don't know?' I said. "You girls know about

  the only party I ever went to, really, and you know

  what happened to me," I said, gazing at my drink. They nodded, all looking both sad and angry

  for me as they recalled the story I had told them at the group therapy session. I had been given too much rum and Coke to drink and some boys had taken advantage and groped me while girls I thought were my friends

  looked on and laughed.

  "Nothing like that is going to happen here," Star

  assured me. "We won't let it."

  "That's right," Jade insisted. "We'll always look

  out for each other!'

  I smiled. I really did feel safer now, even safer

  with them than I had felt with Geraldine. And that's

  what family was supposed to do for you, I thought,

  make you feel secure, let you know that there are

  people who care about you and want to protect you

  and love you. We'd be friends forever and ever, and

  there was nothing I wouldn't do for them and nothing

  they wouldn't do for me. It wasn't just the vodka that

  made me feel warm and comfortable now. It was their

  smiles and their laughter and their promises. We could believe in the promises we made to

  each other easier than those our parents made to us.

  Because we were all veterans of disappointment, we

  knew how painful it would be to disappoint each

  other. What better guarantees were there than the ones

  born out of mutual pain and respect?

  "To the OWP's," Misty cried, holding up her glass as if she could read my very thoughts. "One for

  all and all for one!"

  "To the OWP's," we joined, and drank down

  our drinks.

  Jade started to prepare another for all of us as

  the dinner arrived. We were just beginning to feel

  very good and be happy. The best was yet to come, I

  thought. My friends had helped me bury all my

  disappointments, forever and ever.

  Was I being too optimistic? Was Misty rubbing