Garden of Lies (12 page)

week, not just Friday. I’ll fast for forty days on Lent. I’ll devote my life to serving others.

When Rose came into the apartment, Nonnie was watching “The Lawrence Welk Show.” She

barely glanced up from her knitting.

“You’re late,” she croaked. “I left supper in the oven for you.” Since the night Marie left,

Nonnie had been keeping off Rose’s back. Rose wondered if her grandmother was regretting her

awful words.

“That’s okay. I’m not hungry,” Rose said.

[62] In the tiny dark bedroom she’d shared with Marie, the other bed was bare, sheets removed,

its worn chenille spread pulled tight over the mattress. Clean circles in the dust atop the dresser

marked the places where Marie’s bottles of perfume and skin lotions had stood. Gone, too, the

snapshots and twenty-five-cent photo-booth strips that had been tucked inside the mirror frame.

In Marie’s side of the closet, the empty hangers swung together with a hollow metallic ticking as

Rose hung up her sweater.

It was as if Marie had died. Rose shivered and, only half-aware of what she was doing, made

the sign of the cross.

Then, crouching on the floor, she peeled back a frayed edge of the mustard-brown carpeting

that had come untacked. Underneath was a loose floorboard. She found the metal nail file she

kept in the bottom dresser drawer, and pried up the loose board with it. Underneath was a space

just big enough for an old metal Band-Aid box. Her secret place. No one else knew about it. Not

Marie. Not even Brian.

Rose opened the Band-Aid box, and shook out a lump of gray cotton. Slowly, she unwrapped

it, revealing the glittering treasure hidden within.

A ruby earring, gleaming in her hand like a frozen drop of blood.

The memory came rushing back. Seven years ago—had it been that long? She saw it in her

mind as clearly as if it were happening now. The elegant lady in the mink coat. Rose had seen her

standing just outside the schoolyard fence one day. She didn’t look like any of the mothers. More

like a queen. Or a mysterious movie star, in that beautiful mink coat, and a hat with a little veil

that dipped over her eyes.

Then she’d realized those mysterious eyes underneath the veil were staring at
her.
At first Rose

had been sure she was wrong. She’d even glanced back over her shoulder to see if there was

someone behind her. But, no, the lady was looking straight at her. Her eyes big and somehow

wet-looking, like the clear green marbles in her collection, the ones that were worth ten cat’s

eyes.

Rose cautiously drew a little closer. Sad and lost, that’s how the lady looked. But it didn’t

make any sense. Why should she be? Someone dressed as beautiful as that had to be rich, and

rich people [63] never had worries like the grown-ups Rose knew. It was a cold day, and the lady

seemed to shiver, drawing her mink coat more tightly about her. Ruby earrings twinkled in her

ears. What could she want?

As Rose came through the gate amid the noisy, jostling throng of classmates, the woman took

several jerky steps forward, crying out in a thin strangled voice, “Wait!”

Startled, Rose paused, remembering that she’d been told by Nonnie and the Sisters, not once

but at least fifty times, never
ever
to talk to strangers. But somehow she couldn’t run away. Her

saddle shoes felt as if they were stuck onto the sidewalk. Her arms and legs frozen in place.

Rose waited, as if hypnotized by that beautiful, somehow haunted face, its fragile bones jutting

from pale creamy skin. Soft hair, the color of autumn leaves, floated over her fur collar. Rose was

reminded of a snowflake that would melt if she touched it. The woman’s flowerlike mouth

trembled. Her eyes brimmed with tears. She seemed on the verge of speaking, but she pulled back

abruptly as if she’d changed her mind.

Instead, she reached up with a gloved hand—it had been trembling, Rose remembered—and

unscrewed the ruby from her right ear.

As Rose stood there, too shocked to protest, the lady pressed the tiny earring, icy cold, into her

palm. Then she had run off, high heels clattering on the frozen sidewalk, ducking into a long

sleek limousine that waited at the curb, disappearing as if in a puff of smoke.

Rose had been sure of it. The lady was her Guardian Angel. Everyone had one, Sister Perpetua

said. But Rose hadn’t believed it was true for her ... until that day.

And now she had the earring to prove it.

Rose held it up to the light, a ruby in the shape of a teardrop dangling from a tiny gold and

diamond stud. Even in the dim room, it blazed with a light of its own, causing Rose to suck her

breath in with wonder even though she’d looked at it a hundred times. Yes, magic. Heaven-sent

magic.

And she needed its magic now, more than ever.

“Don’t leave me, Bri,” she whispered, clenching it tightly in her fist, more passion in her heart

than a thousand rosaries could have summoned. “Please don’t ever leave me.”

Chapter 2

NEW YORK CITY, 1963

Rachel frowned at her plate, at the fried egg centered between two neat triangles of toast.

Round as a daisy, and not a single bubble. Bridget, she knew, fried them inside a cookie cutter to

keep the edges smooth. So they would be as perfect as everything in this house. The fork in her

hand, Mama’s Carder silver, was polished to mirror brightness. She caught a distorted glimpse of

her reflection in it now, round blue eyes, a scatter of light brown hair.

“I’m not going,” Rachel said, quietly answering her mother’s question.

How could she? After last night with Gil? Get dressed up, flirt, pretend nothing was wrong.

God, what a joke that would be.

Gil’s words came back now, pricking her,
“Why don’t you just admit it, Rachel? You’re not so

goddamn moral. That’s not why you won’t go all the way with me. It’s because you really don’t

like sex. You’re frigid. Or maybe it’s a girl you want. ...”

Rachel brought the tines of her fork down hard into the yolk, watching it burst, ooze across the

fine Blue Willow plate, obscuring the weeping willow and the three tiny figures crossing the

bridge.

She was furious at Gil—of all the pompous asses at Haverford, he took the prize!—but

underneath the thought itched at her,
God, what if it’s true?

Face it,
she told herself,
it’s not just Gil who leaves you cold. Something’s been missing with

every guy so far.

Twenty, and still a virgin. Not, as Gil had pointed out, because she was so moral. No. Worse.

The truth was, she just hadn’t
felt
like it so far.

Rachel stared down at the ruined egg yolk, feeling slightly nauseated. Only this sickness had

nothing to do with the mess on her plate, she knew, or the beers she’d drunk last night.

[65] It all boiled down to sex, she thought. Everything. Fashions. Perfume. Magazine covers.

Even those television ads for toothpaste. It seemed as if everyone in the whole world was either

thinking about it, talking about it, or doing it.

So what’s wrong with me?

Was it like learning to swim? Either you were good at it, or you sank like a rock?

Or maybe she’d been born this way. Normal on the outside. Pretty even. Rachel remembered

when she was a child, Great-aunt Willie in her mink smothering her in a furry, perfumed

embrace, then grabbing a handful of cheek in each gloved hand, crowing, “Just like a little baby

doll! So dainty! And those blue eyes, Sylvie, she must have gotten them from Gerald! But where

did that pretty little doll’s face come from? Not from you or your mama. I wonder who?”

“The Girl with the Watering Can,”
Rachel had replied solemnly.

That was what Mama always said, anyway, that Rachel reminded her of the Renoir painting.

She had showed Rachel the picture in a book, a little girl with waves of red-gold hair and bright

Wedgwood-blue eyes that matched her dress, standing stiffly posed in a garden, holding a

watering can.

Rachel had hated that picture, and once in a black mood had scribbled over it with a crayon.

Why were people always telling her she was dainty and cute and precious? She’d longed to run

through the echoing rooms of their big house, instead of walking softly as Mama always

admonished, to shout at the top of her lungs, and turn cartwheels on the patterned rugs. Not be

like some doll or a girl holding a stupid watering can, but like a bird or a wild creature, doing as

she pleased, not caring what people thought of her.

Now she wondered if she had been worrying all that time about the wrong thing. Wishing she

were tall and fierce like the Amazon women she’d read about, when all along there was

something wrong with her on the
inside.
Some awful undetected deformity. Missing hormones, or

a paralyzed sex drive. Or even, God forbid, something actually wrong with her
down there.

“Rachel, what’s gotten into you?” Mama’s voice broke into her thoughts.

Rachel looked up. Daddy, she saw, was absorbed in his paper, but Mama was regarding her

with that sad, faintly bewildered [66] expression she always seemed to wear whenever they

disagreed about something. Could she tell Mama? Mama, who surrounded herself only with

beautiful things, chamber music always on the stereo, silk scarves and embroidered

handkerchiefs, her precious roses. She looked like a flower herself, slim and elegant, with those

wide forest-green eyes and her pale, almost white-blond hair. Eight-thirty in the morning, and she

already had on lipstick, wearing her daisy-print Lilly Pulitzer housecoat to see Daddy off to the

bank.

She’d probably be so shocked. She’s never talked about sex, at least not to me. I wonder if

she’s ever felt that way, passionate about Daddy
... or
anyone.

“I’m just not up to it, that’s all,” Rachel said. “That calculus exam did me in; I had about

twenty minutes’ sleep all last week.” She sighed, and picked up a triangle of toast, dipping one

corner in the gooey egg. “When I went into pre-med, I thought I’d mostly be dissecting things

like sheep’s eyes and cow hearts, not integers.”

Rachel saw her mother wince. Plainly, Sylvie still hated the idea of her becoming a doctor.

Rachel felt a flash of irritation toward her.

Dammit, I
won’t
be like her. Like a pair of silk stockings, lovely but perishable. Doing Good

Works, but not getting my hands dirty.

Then Rachel was struck by a new, disturbing thought.
Suppose I’m more like her than I realise.

If Mama doesn’t care much for sex
—
and I couldn’t possibly imagine her doing It with Daddy the

way Sophia Loren did It with Marcello Mastroianni in
Divorce Italian Style—
then what if a thing

like that could be inherited, like the color of my eyes, or hair?

“The party isn’t for another two weeks,” Sylvie reminded her gently. Her mother smiled faintly

as she poured milk from a silver creamer into her coffee, and began slowly, gracefully, to stir it,

her spoon chiming against the Limoges cup. “I was just thinking. Remembering when Mason

taught you to swim—you must have been four or five. The first winter Daddy bought the place in

Palm Beach. Isn’t that right, Gerald?”

Daddy looked up from the
Wall Street Journal.
“Mmm? Oh, yes, yes. You and that little boy

were always up to one thing or another. Most of it no good.” He caught Rachel’s eye, giving her a

wink, and for an instant she felt the invisible ring that enclosed just the two of them.

Then she thought with a pang,
He looks so old.

[67] Rubbed smooth with age, like Mama’s antique silver tea set. She saw the freckled ridge of

his scalp beneath the silver hair fine as cobwebs, the rust that lightly blotched his face, and felt

almost pain at the thought of how close she might be to losing him.

She remembered when he used to lift her, swinging her up, up over his head. And she,

suspended in the air, looking down into his sparkling eyes, seeing his love for her, perfect and

shining, had felt ... oh, bliss.

Then she thought of sitting in his lap in the dim, leather-smelling coolness of his study

listening to music, such fun because each record had a story, and Daddy would tell it, pretending

to be all the different characters. Some of them so silly, and some so sad. So by her eighth

birthday, she knew every libretto by heart. Then he’d taken her, just the two of them, to the

Metropolitan Opera, which she’d thought was the most beautiful place in the world, and they’d

seen her favorite,
The Marriage of Figaro.

But now, damn it, he seemed not just thinner, but frail somehow, moving more cautiously, eyes

somehow burning, as if there were a fire inside him, consuming him bit by bit.

She remembered with a pang that awful day three years ago, when the call came that Daddy

had been rushed to the Intensive Care Unit at New York Hospital. She had dashed over from

school, and, too anxious even to wait for the elevator, had bolted up the stairwell. She finally

reached his room, disheveled, out of breath, panting. Looking at him, gray and shrunken under