The Ladies of Garrison Gardens Read Online Free PDF

things on the doors,” she said unsteadily. “I have bedrooms and sitting rooms and dressing rooms and a room for cutting flowers.” Laughter she couldn't control was gurgling up inside her. “There were times when Ma was gone on a bender and I didn't have enough to eat. I slept on the couch when I was a kid, because we only had one bedroom. A month ago I was trying to figure out how to pay for a new air conditioner.”
    The laughter was coming in waves, and she could hear it sounding a little shrill. She was afraid of what would happen next. But, God love them, Maggie and Li'l Bit started giggling along with her. Then somehow they were all holding on to one another and laughing. Then they weren't laughing anymore, they were just clinging to one another.
    “What the hell am I going to do?” Laurel asked.
    Maggie said, “You're going to go through your new house, Doodlebug.”
    And when Laurel couldn't seem to make herself move, Li'l Bit opened the door to the nearest bedroom and gently nudged her inside.
    From behind her, Maggie snapped on a wall switch, but it only produced a dim light. Through the gloom Laurel could see creamy wallpaper featuring urns and some kind of pink flower. Thick pale rugs were scattered over the floor. There seemed to be a lot of padded chairs and love seats and round tables with skirts, and the twin beds shared a tufted headboard.
    “I'd fight not to spend a night in this room,” Laurel said. But Li'l Bit and Maggie were staring at it transfixed, so she added quickly, “But what do I know? It just doesn't seem like Peggy.”
    “No wonder,” Maggie said softly. “Peggy never touched this room. This is the way Myrtis decorated it, two years before she died. She showed it to me.”
    “That was before I was born,” Laurel said. “It was . . . I don't know how many years ago.”
    “It was nineteen-fifty-six,” said Maggie. The date seemed to echo around the room as they all stood quietly, trying to digest what this said about Peggy.
    It was Li'l Bit who broke the silence. “That little writing desk over there belonged to Myrtis's grandmother,” she said, in a hushed voice. “Her father bought it for her as a wedding present. The initials on that sewing basket—
M. B.
—stand for
Myrtis Benedict.
Her father's people were Benedicts.”
    “Peggy kept all Myrtis's stuff,” Laurel said, needing for some reason to state the obvious.
    “Yes,” said Li'l Bit.
    “Maybe it was only this room,” Laurel said hopefully.
    But it was the same in all of them. The fan in the glass case on one sitting-room wall was the one Myrtis's mother had carried at her deb party. Myrtis's aunt had painted the music box on the nightstand in another bedroom, and the little china clock. The Benedicts seemed to have had a fondness for monograms; a big fancy
B
with swirling curlicues was painted or carved on almost every available surface. But even worse than the damn
B
s were the family photographs sitting in silver frames on the tables with the fancy skirts. In room after room, Li'l Bit stood immobile, her face going from scarlet to white as Maggie quietly identified sepia-toned pictures of Benedict women in hobble skirts and Benedict men wearing white summer suits and boater hats. The Garrisons were represented too, mostly brandishing sporting equipment; tennis rackets and croquet mallets. There wasn't one picture of Peggy's family. Or of Peggy.
    “All those years . . .” Maggie said, when they'd walked out of the last gloomy bedroom and were back in the sunny brightness of the mezzanine. “Peggy lived here for all those years. . . .”
    “And she never changed a thing,” said Li'l Bit, with a sadness that cut.
    “She never asked either one of us to come upstairs.” Maggie smiled an achy little smile. “This is the first time we've been up in this part of the house. I guess now we know why.”
    “She was so afraid,” said Li'l Bit. “All her life she was afraid.”
    Of what?
Laurel wanted to