Leota's Garden (26 page)

“Not as close as I’d like us to be.” She peered down at him, the saw poised. “Our family didn’t come often, but when we did visit, my mother relegated me to the backyard. I hardly know my grandmother, Corban.” She began sawing the dead limb. “But I’m going to remedy that.”

Leota found the ball of twine in the laundry cabinet on the back porch. She was already exhausted. Just standing at the garden gate wore her out. The sunshine felt so good, but it also drained her of what little energy she had. Too many months of sitting inside in artificial light, she guessed. She had become as pale as a moldering corpse. Well, she wasn’t sitting inside anymore!

She took her sun hat from the wall, where it had been hanging for two years, and went back outside. Her legs felt like lead as she went up the four brick steps to the cobblestone walkway that ran in front of the living unit Bernard had built for his parents.

Everywhere she looked, things needed pruning, thinning, tying up, and removing. Hours of work. For her, it had always been a labor of love. Would it be so for Annie? Poor Corban looked so grim. She had no illusions about why he had agreed to help: he was after information, probably interrogating Annie right now. Not that Annie could tell him much. The little darling wouldn’t even realize she was being interviewed. It wouldn’t enter her head that someone might want to use her.

Then again, maybe she was being unfair to Corban. It wasn’t entirely his fault he was so puffed up with knowledge that he didn’t have a lick
of sense. Education was no less an idol these days than it was in the past. Corban didn’t have her advantages. Sometimes the school of hard knocks taught more than the best universities in the land.

And You, Lord. You teach the heart as well as the mind. Sometimes the truth is hard to bear, but it’s better to walk in the light of truth than to live in the darkness of lies.

She was panting slightly when she reached the gate. “You work quickly,” she said to Corban.

His gaze flickered from Annie to her. She stumbled over one of the cobblestones. Keeping her balance, she gripped an arbor post.

“Are you all right, Mrs. Reinhardt?” Corban looked worried. What did he think? She’d keel over and die at his feet and his paper would go up in smoke? “I’m fine. Just old and clumsy.”

“I’ll get you one of those garden chairs.”

“Buttering me up, are you?”

He paused and gave her a sardonic smile. “It’s easier talking to you when you’re conscious.”

She chuckled. The lad lacked good manners, but he had spunk. She admired that. “So, have you been asking Annie all kinds of questions about the old lady while I was in the house?”

“I tried.”

At least he was learning to tell the truth and not be pretentious.

Annie parted two branches and grinned down at her. “You are a great mystery, Grandma.”

“It’s good to be a mystery. Piques the interest. If I told Corban everything about myself, he wouldn’t bother coming around, and I’d have to break in another volunteer.” Corban returned with the American steel chair and plunked it down on the small, weedy lawn. He was clearly annoyed. “Well? Isn’t it the truth?”

“You shouldn’t tease him, Grandma. I’m sure he won’t forget all about you after getting the information he needs for his report.”

“You must be seeing sides of him I’ve missed.” Corban’s face turned red, whether from temper or embarrassment she didn’t know. She looked him in the eyes. “If I’m wrong, tell me.”

“I’m thinking about leaving right now.”

“Oh, stop pouting. Before you go, move the chair over there in the sunshine. I’ll be able to see better what Annie’s doing to that cherry tree.”

Corban snatched up the chair, maneuvered it through the gate, and slammed it down again. He came back and offered his arm for support.

“And I didn’t even have to ask,” she said, smiling up at him. She held firmly to his arm as she made her way over the rough ground of the back section. “Such a good boy, seeing to an old lady’s needs.” She settled herself comfortably in the chair. “Thank you, dear.”

“You’re welcome,
ma’am
,” he said through his teeth.

She took the ball of twine out of her sweater pocket and held it out to him. “In case you change your mind about leaving.” When he just looked at it, she said, “For the branches. Two-foot lengths. Did you forget already?”

“I was hoping you had.” He took the ball of twine and went back to work.

Leota was warming to him. He was stiff and stuffy and self-seeking, but he might just be reachable. She leaned back, enjoying the feel of sunshine on her face. “Did you know an apricot tree can live up to a hundred years?”

“How old is yours, Grandma?”

“Sixty-five years old, or close to it. It was just starting to bear fruit when I came to live with Mama and Papa Reinhardt. I planted two cherry trees. One died. I never knew what killed it. One day it was healthy and the next the leaves were withering. I was worried some blight had gotten it and would spread to the other tree, so I cut it down quick and burned it. I did a lot of working and praying on that soil before I planted that plum tree to replace it.”

“Sounds like a lot of worry expended on a tree.” Corban tossed one tied bundle aside and started to put together another.

“It was 1944. Worry was part of breathing. The war was going strong. My husband was in the army, fighting in Europe. Seeing that tree die made me worry all the more about him.”

Corban paused in his work and looked at her with a frown. “I don’t get it. What does a tree dying have to do with your husband in Europe?”

“Nothing, I suppose, except that this was my victory garden. It’s hard to believe everything will turn out right when your fruit tree dies overnight.”

“Oh.” He still looked confused. His smile was polite, but his expression said it all. He thought she was losing her marbles. “Did your husband come home?”

“Yes, he came home.” Corban looked at her, waiting for more. She looked back and smiled. He could wait awhile longer. He wouldn’t appreciate what she had to tell him. Not yet, at least.

“What was Grandpa like?” Annie said, still perched on the ladder. She snipped another branch, lowering it carefully through the others before dropping it.

“What has your mother told you?”

Annie went still on the ladder. “Nothing much,” she said after a moment and started working again.

Poor Eleanor. So much anger, so much shame. All because she was too blind and too stubborn to want to see the truth.
Lord, sometimes I wish I could shake that girl until the walls around her heart crumble. I imagine You know exactly how I feel.

“He was a good man, Annie,” Leota said firmly. “He had a good heart. He cared deeply about many things. He was just . . . quiet.”

Bernard hadn’t always had the drawbridges up. There had been a time when he was like a knight mounted on a great steed ready to go into any battle. Hadn’t he stormed her citadel and claimed her heart? She had agreed to marry him after four dates, the announcement coming as such a shock to his parents that they never quite got over it. Papa almost had, perhaps, but Mama hadn’t fully accepted her until the end, and by then, it was too late to undo the years of damage.

For three years she and Bernard had been blessed with happiness. Then the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor and turned their world upside down. Bernard had joined the army rather than wait to be drafted. She had understood his reasons, but that didn’t stop the fear from almost eating her alive all the time he was gone. She had loved him so much she thought she would die without him. It wasn’t until later that she came to understand that there were things worse than death.

Bernard Gottlieb Reinhardt had gone off to war young and proud of who he was: a loyal American willing to put his life on the line to bring Hitler down. His parents were as eager for Hitler’s regime to be destroyed as he, for they followed the news of what the ego-mad dictator was doing in Europe. They prayed for their relatives living in Germany, agonizing over what might be happening to them. What they did hear was soul wrenching. Why couldn’t others see what was really
happening and get out of Germany before it was too late? They could come to America, the land of freedom and opportunity.

Freedom and opportunity . . .

Opportunities dwindled quickly for those who still retained thick German accents. Distrust abounded.

Poor Bernard had carried so much responsibility on his shoulders. He had gone off, not just to fight a war but to seek out two uncles and their families and find out what happened to them. If he could find them.

And, as God would have it, he did.

The Bernard Gottlieb Reinhardt who came home was not the same man who had marched proudly off to war. The veteran was a stranger, broken and filled with an anguish so deep that nothing had ever lifted him fully from the depths of his depression. Not even alcohol could deaden the pain he lived with until the day he died.

Corban said something to her, and shaken from her thoughts, she looked at him, confused, still lost in the mire of memories.

“Your husband, Mrs. Reinhardt. What did he do for a living?”

“Oh, he did lots of things. He painted houses for a while. Then he did drywall work. He was employed by a roofer. I guess you could say Bernard had so many different jobs that he became a jack-of-all-trades. You’ll have to take a look inside the apartment behind the carport. Bernard built that for his parents. He did everything, even the plumbing.”

She didn’t see any reason to tell them that after the war Bernard couldn’t seem to hold a job longer than a year. Something always happened: hurt feelings, a fight, poor pay, layoffs, firing.

“He became a handyman after a while. People would call him to do odd jobs. A little of this, a little of that. Whatever he did, he did well.”

Annie was looking at her from her perch. When Annie smiled, Leota saw something in her expression that made her want to weep. Perhaps Eleanor had said more than Annie was willing to share.

“With that kind of occupation, it’d be impossible to save enough for retirement years,” Corban said.

Leota’s mouth tightened. She supposed he meant Bernard had left her without resources. That was true, but not something she liked to dwell upon. “There are more things to life than money, young man.” She had no intention of going over Bernard’s shortcomings as a husband or father. He had done the best he could.

“I didn’t mean any slight against your husband, Mrs. Reinhardt.”

The foolish boy was still fixed on his project, gathering facts, making suppositions. All wrong. “The fact is, we never talked about retirement,” she said. “There wasn’t time. In our generation, most people worked until they were sixty-five or seventy or were wheeled out the door feetfirst. Some got tossed out a month before retirement benefits were scheduled to start. Bernard died in 1970. And don’t ask me how he died. I didn’t request an autopsy.”

When Corban winced, she closed her eyes, sorry she had been so abrupt. She sighed and opened her eyes to look into his. “There are things you can never understand, Corban, and I haven’t the heart left to explain.”

He frowned, searching her face. For the first time, she saw compassion. She smiled slightly. “It’s not going to be as easy as you thought, is it? This project of yours.”

“No, it isn’t.”

“What happened to you?” Ruth said when Corban entered the apartment.

“I’ve been doing manual labor,” he said dryly, collapsing onto the battered sofa. He was exhausted, dirty, and annoyed. Glancing around the apartment, he felt slightly better. He had expected to come home to a mess, but Ruth had been busy. The rug was vacuumed, the pillows on the sofa plumped, the coffee table clear of its usual debris after one of her gatherings. “What happened? Was the meeting canceled?”

“No,” she said in annoyance. “I just finished cleaning up. Everyone left hours ago. Where have you been, Cory?”

“At Mrs. Reinhardt’s, helping her granddaughter prune fruit trees.”

“Granddaughter?”

Corban heard the edge in her voice. Jealousy? Nice to know he was appreciated. “Her name’s Anne. Eighteen or so. She’s going to some art school in San Francisco.”