The Red Garden (22 page)

“What’s she like?” Marian asked Carla.

“She’s an amazing baker.” Carla knew enough to keep her descriptions brief. No stories of Seven Deadly Sins cakes, particularly Lust Cake, a lemon poppy seed triple layer with sugary frosting that was impossible to resist. She wisely failed to mention that Tessa carelessly walked around town wearing little more than her underwear, unaware that this might be considered unusual. She certainly didn’t tell her mother that Ava served them coffee at breakfast or that on that very first night, when the Coopers had moved into the cottage and there were still unpacked boxes stacked everywhere, Ava had allowed the girls small glasses of champagne and they’d all made a giddy toast. Once Carla let slip that Tessa’s father was an actor, but she quickly fell quiet when she saw the look on her mother’s face.

O
N
S
ATURDAYS
C
ARLA
never went to the Coopers. “I’ll meet you at the river before supper,” she told Tessa. When asked why she was never around on Saturdays, she said only that she had family obligations, or errands to run. The truth was she had to
report to the gas station. She prayed Ava Cooper’s station wagon didn’t need gas while she was at work. Carla counted the minutes while she sat behind the cash register or helped her father bleed the brakes on Leo Mott’s Chrysler. Her brother, Johnny, often had a hangover, and when he was in a bad mood, Carla stayed away from him. He was the sort of young man who could charm someone one minute and have a fistfight with him the next. He had the up-and-down personality many of the Kellys were said to have. Women couldn’t stay away from him.

Carla bolted her lunch while working the cash register and ducked her head when a group of girls she knew from the high school walked by. One of the girls, Madeline Hall, was sent in by the others to ask if Johnny was around. They were all much too young for him, yet they yearned for him, or who they thought he was. They’d become something of a fan club.

“He’s in the back working,” Carla said.

“Well, we’re all going to the movies in Lenox next weekend,” Madeline told her. “You could come, too, and bring Johnny.”

“Thanks, but no thanks,” Carla replied.

Before, she would have died for an invitation. Now she had plans with Tessa. Carla sat there the rest of the day dreamily biding her time. She had her bathing suit on under her clothes. As soon as the clock hit five, she headed out.

The high school girls were gathered on the steps of the library when she passed by. “Hey, Carla,” one of them called. It was Jennifer Starr. “Don’t forget the movies next Saturday.”

Carla wished those girls would disappear into thin air. They were so small-town in their shorts and T-shirts, their hair braided or pushed back with headbands. They’d never been anywhere at all, let alone seen Manhattan. They probably didn’t even know
who Jack Kerouac was. And they certainly didn’t have Tessa Cooper as their best friend.

As it turned out, Tessa seemed to need Carla just as much as Carla needed her. She had confided that she was frightened of crowds. She grew uneasy on buses and in theaters. Sometimes she couldn’t speak in class. She became totally tongue-tied. She was smart and beautiful and there was no reason for her to be shy, but she was.

“Don’t worry,” Carla had assured her. “We’ll be in all the same classes. If you can’t speak, I’ll just say you have laryngitis.”

Tessa had thrown her new friend a grateful look.

C
ARLA CUT THROUGH
the woods after work. She followed along the marsh where there were cattails and the ground turned spongy. There were little frogs in the puddles and white butterflies with green specks on paper-thin wings circling the purple thistle. The sun was like honey, falling in splashes. It was a relief not to be on Main Street, in her father’s gas station, where everyone knew her and everything about her. Carla hadn’t imagined the ways in which her life might follow a different path until the Coopers moved into the museum cottage. Since then she’d been seized with the impulse to create a more intriguing persona for herself. Lately, everything seemed brand-new, including Blackwell, even though Carla knew every street and lane.

She heard the murmur of voices as she approached the river. There was Tessa sitting on her beach towel, laughing in the dappled sunlight, wearing her white slip with the red blouse thrown over it like a jacket. Next to her in the grass were Frank
and Jesse Mott, both sixteen. They’d seen Tessa and Carla walking through the woods day after day, arms thrown around each other, beach towels over their shoulders. It was Tessa they were interested in. Once she was alone, without the pesky Kelly girl hovering, they’d been bold enough to introduce themselves. As Carla drew near, the Mott brothers stopped talking.

“Hey!” Tessa signaled her over. “Where’ve you been? Come on,” she called to Carla. She patted the picnic basket beside her. “My mother sent a treat.” Tessa turned to the boys. “We’ll share if you’re good.”

“I will be,” Frank offered. The boys were twins, but Frank was the tenderhearted one who played by the rules. “I can’t speak for my brother.”

Jesse was already opening the basket. He had his eyes on Tessa’s tanned legs.

“Quit it,” she said, pushing him aside. They looked at each other after they’d touched. Then, as quickly, they looked away. Carla had a strange feeling in the pit of her stomach. Jesse was the boy everyone in town was in love with. “Oh,” Tessa said, bringing forth a half of a cake. “It’s Gluttony Cake! Devil’s food with chocolate pudding and chocolate chips inside.”

They cut the cake into pieces and wolfed it down—at least the Mott brothers and Tessa did. Carla took a neat bite, then tossed her portion into the woods when no one was looking. She felt sick. She was quiet that afternoon, more audience than participant, and she was glad when the day was over. When the girls left, the boys followed until they had to split up at the road and go their separate ways.

“See you tomorrow,” the Mott brothers called.

“Maybe,” Tessa called back. “Maybe not.”

For a shy girl she seemed entirely comfortable with the boys’ attentions.

“Are you madly in love with Jesse?” Carla asked once they were alone. “Be honest.”

“Of course not!” Tessa laughed.

“That’s good,” Carla lowered her voice. “He’s ruined a lot of girls’ reputations.”

Tessa glanced over at her friend. “Reputations don’t mean a thing,” she said. “Jack Kerouac couldn’t care less about a person’s reputation.”

“Well, he didn’t live in Blackwell,” Carla said emphatically. “That Jesse is bad news.” It wasn’t completely true, but it was true enough, and Carla felt satisfied that she’d warned her best friend against him.

T
HE NEXT DAY
was Sunday and Carla had to go visit her grandparents for lunch. On the way home, she was in the car with her parents and Johnny when they saw a station wagon pulled up at the gas pumps.

“Someone broke down,” Carla’s dad, Bill, said.

They were closed on Sundays, but steam was rising from beneath the station wagon’s hood. All at once Carla realized it was the Coopers’ car. Ava was standing there smoking a cigarette, a worried expression on her face. Carla slunk down in the backseat. Her face flushed, and she could feel her heart hitting against her chest.

“I’ll take care of it,” Johnny said. He got out and went over to Ava. She laughed and curtsied as though he was a knight who
had come to her rescue. Carla looked through the rear window of the car as her father drove away. She watched until they turned the corner and couldn’t see anymore.

The next day when Carla went to the cottage, the Coopers’ car wasn’t in the driveway.

“My mother broke down. She got a ride back here on the back of a motorcycle. The guy driving it looked so much like Jack Kerouac I couldn’t believe it.”

Carla worried all that week that she would be found out. She was nothing in this town, just a gas station girl. As soon as Tessa knew who she was, she wouldn’t want her as a best friend anymore. Carla carried her dread around with her, knowing her happiness at being someone brand-new would soon be over. Sure enough, on Saturday Ava Cooper showed up to collect her car. “Carla,” she said, delighted when she came upon her daughter’s friend in the office. “I didn’t know you had a job!” Ava had a cake tin with her. “The gentleman who worked here was so helpful I brought a Gratitude Cake.” It was angel food with vanilla icing. “It’s even better than Gluttony Cake, although nothing is as good as an Apology Cake. That is by far my best recipe.”

Johnny waved from the garage. “Car’s all ready,” he called to Ava.

“Great,” Ava called back.

“Don’t tell Tessa,” Carla said.

“What?” Ava was distracted. She grabbed the cake tin to take out to the garage.

“Don’t tell her I work in a gas station.”

“There’s nothing wrong with working. You should be proud of it.”

“Please don’t tell her,” Carla begged.

Ava looked at Carla, her brow furrowed. “Okay. Fine. You tell her.”

A
T THE END
of the day Carla ran all the way to the river. She and Tessa always wore their bathing suits, but they never went swimming. There were the eels in the water, and if that wasn’t enough to keep a person out of the river, there were fast eddies and little whirlpools even in the summertime. Carla had warned Tessa that the Eel River was dangerous. But on that Saturday, Tessa and Jesse Mott were in the water. Carla could hear them whooping as they encountered the shock of the cold currents. She stopped at the edge of the pine forest. The sunlight was blinding. There they were, swimming around, laughing. Then Jesse moved in close, as if he was going to tell Tessa a secret. Tessa laughed and swam away to the bank. She pulled herself out. She stood there in her slip, now see-through in the sunlight, water dripping from her arms and from her long pale hair. She looked like a nymph. She had an unreadable expression, but she broke into a grin when she spied Carla standing in the woods.

“Hey, you!” Tessa waved. She looked like herself again.

Carla could hear Jesse mutter “Shit” under his breath as he dragged himself onto the riverbank. He certainly wasn’t pleased to see her. Carla walked toward them with a sour look.

“There are eels in there,” she said of the water. “Where’s Frank?” she asked Jesse. Just the two of them meant something. She felt as if she had stepped into a pool of treachery even though Tessa seemed glad to see her.

“He’s going to meet us tonight,” Tessa said.

“Tonight?” Carla said.

“We’re going to have a party,” Jesse remarked. “Unless you can’t come,” he said pointedly to Carla.

They were to meet at midnight on the steps of the museum. Carla and Tessa walked home together, slowly, for the day was still brutally hot. “What if it’s haunted like people say?” Carla wanted to know of their planned nighttime foray. “What if we see the sister who ran away?”

“Then we’ll prove there are ghosts, and I can write to Jack Kerouac and he can come here and rescue me.”

Carla was surprised to hear that Tessa of all people thought she needed rescuing.

“I thought you liked Blackwell,” she said reproachfully.

“Not from Blackwell.” Tessa made a face. “From myself.”

When she stopped, Carla did, too.

“You promise you won’t tell?” Tessa said.

Carla crossed her heart, which was pounding against her chest. Tessa lifted up the sleeves of her red shirt. There were marks on both wrists.

“Is that from the eels in the river?” Carla said, confused. “Were you bitten? That stupid Jesse, he should have never taken you swimming.”

Tessa smiled, then shook her head sadly. “It’s from before we moved here.”

Suddenly Carla realized these were the marks of a razor blade.

“Why would you cut yourself?” she asked.

Tessa shrugged. “After my father left, I didn’t see the point of things. I wanted to burn bright. To feel something deeply.”

“Tiger, tiger,” Carla murmured softly.

“Exactly.” Tessa glowed. “You understand me, Carly. But it was a mistake. My father never even showed up at the hospital. And they made me leave school. That’s the real reason we moved here.”

“Sometimes I feel like leaving school,” Carla admitted. “People make fun of me because I work in my father’s gas station.”

There. It was out in the open. Carla looked sideways at her friend.

“They’re probably just jealous because you have a job,” Tessa said. “You’re more mature and responsible.”

Carla didn’t think that was the reason, but she was pleased to hear that Tessa did.

“Hey, you two,” Ava said when they approached the cottage. She signaled them into the kitchen, where she’d been baking all day. The owner of the Hightop Inn had been interested when Ava went up there with a sampling of cakes. He said he might be willing to take six cakes per week. “Try this,” Ava said, cutting them slices of yellow coconut cake. “Envy Cake. Everyone wants the recipe.”

“It’s unbelievable,” Tessa said. “I’m going to send one of these to Jack Kerouac.”

“You don’t know where he lives,” Carla reminded her.

“I’ll send it via his publisher. I’ll write a note that will make him burn with desire.
I envy your life on the road. Take me with you!
”

T
HEY SNEAKED OUT
at the midnight hour. It was the Fourth of July, so no one would notice. Everyone would be out in Band’s Meadow watching the fireworks or they’d be at the annual Independence Day party at the Jack Straw Bar and Grill. Carla
had come through the woods alone. She was nervous in the dark. She was nervous about meeting the Motts. She wondered what it felt like to cut yourself, to be so daring, to be asked to leave school, to not care about your reputation.

Tessa climbed out her window while Carla waited in the yard. She shinnied down the drainpipe, then jumped down from the porch roof. There were red roses growing there and the thorns had torn into Tessa’s skin, but she didn’t seem to mind. She and Carla looped their arms around each other and went toward the museum.

“Who do you like better? Frank or Jesse?” Carla asked.