Something True

by Karelia Stetz-Waters

  Now she leaned into a turn, the bike almost horizontal, speed holding her a few feet off the ground.

  She thought, I can get her back. She had lost her cell phone and with it Laura’s number, but there had to be a number for Laura’s development company. Only this time, Tate would be like Vita—at least, pre-Cairo Vita. She’d be bold but aloof.

  How did you get this number? Laura’s voice would catch in her throat when she realized who was on the other end of the phone.

  The president’s daughter isn’t hard to track down.

  Tate played the conversation out in her mind as she rumbled over the bridge.

  I can’t see you again.

  I don’t want to see you. I want to feel you.

  Oh Tate, I need you!

  And even if she did not call Laura at Clark-Vester, Tate trusted what she had felt in Laura’s touch. She had told Vita it wouldn’t work. No one came back. But she had to be wrong. Laura wanted her. Laura would come back. She had to.

  In the meantime, Tate thought, she really would go vegan and stop drinking. She would install the pull-up bar that had been stashed under her futon for two years. She would join a gym. Perhaps she would get another tattoo. The labrys had been an eighteen-year-old’s impulse purchase. She could get something more dramatic, a full sleeve of mermaids fornicating, or a phoenix, or dragons eating a phoenix on top of mermaids fornicating.

  Then one day, Laura would walk through the front door of Out Coffee, see Tate surrounded by a flock of admiring baby dykes, be consumed with jealousy, and fall into Tate’s muscular and well-inked arms. She could almost smell Laura’s perfume.

  That was the problem with breakups. People made resolutions, but they never followed through. Only this time, she would. She would be a different woman when Laura walked back into her life.

  She took the Steel Bridge at seventy-five, not even scanning her rearview mirror for police. It didn’t matter. She could outrun them. The bike was old, but she knew it like her own breath. She could take 99W at 90 mph, be in Oregon City in ten minutes, Washington State in twenty.

  She circled back to catch the Hawthorne Bridge and return to downtown. She would ride each bridge—eleven of them—all the way down to the two-lane Sellwood Bridge that arched so high it did not need to draw open for the ships. Then she would return to her apartment, do two hundred push-ups and start planning her rebirth from the ashes.

  Except that the Hawthorne Bridge was open when she got there. A line of cars waited for the tall freight liner to pass through the open mouth of the drawbridge. She idled. The boat was moving very slowly.

  A few specks of rain hit her visor as though Portland was reminding her of the long winter to come. The car in front of her rolled up its windows. She zipped up her leather, but her T-shirt was already damp. In fact, she was cold throughout. And tired. And the bike was making a coughing sound that warned her of another expensive repair.

  Before she realized she was crying, a sob escaped her lips.

  Laura did not care if she got a tattoo of mermaids fornicating. Laura had not pushed her into a closet and denounced their love because Tate’s biceps were not sufficiently inked or because her triceps were inadequately defined. She would not love Tate more if Tate started chewing on lemongrass sticks and drinking pulverized wheatgrass or whatever concoction Lill was pushing these days.

  A thunderclap—a rarity in Portland—exploded. The rain hit her like a dam breaking. The whole awful day came back to her in a wave.

  She remembered the sudden fear she had felt when she thought someone had broken into Laura’s house. Once again, she felt the bitterness of Laura’s closet. It wasn’t just that Laura wasn’t willing to come out or even be seen with her. The pain was simpler than that. Even after her conscious mind knew they were not going to be killed by an intruder, her body had been afraid. She had been scared, and Laura had pushed her into the dark to be alone. Another sob wracked her body.

  Before her, the ship passed. The drawbridge began to lower slowly. The traffic light turned green. The brake lights in front of her winked off. This part of the bridge was made of a metal grate, the river clearly visible below. The trick to riding the grate was to loosen up. Let the emptiness between the rails pull at the tires. Let the bike wobble a little as the metal pulled it back and forth. But Tate could not relax. She jerked the bike into position, even as she cried into the soft foam of her helmet.

  All she could think was that after everything Laura had done and not done, the only thing that would ease the pain in her chest was the feel of Laura’s arms around her, to hear Laura’s voice in her ear whispering some endearment. Sweetheart. Baby. The very person who broke her heart was the only person who could comfort her.

  She revved the bike, ignored its cough, and started off in the direction of the city. She felt the wind on her hands, the rumble of the bike beneath her. She saw the headlights of an oncoming van. The visor hid her tears, but she knew the other drivers could see her shaking with sobs. She didn’t care. No one could comfort her. What could Vita say? For all Tate knew, Vita had found another bottle of Southern Comfort and was halfway through. And Maggie would hit the liquor if she learned the truth about Tate and Laura. She had no one to go to. And she wept too because she knew that Laura probably would come back to Portland—at least once—and that she could probably sleep with her again if she wanted. And that she must not because every moment they spent together only delayed the inevitable end. The longer she postponed it, the more it would hurt. For the first time in her life, Tate thought she might not have the strength to survive another heartbreak.

  The bike weaved. Angrily she revved the engine and muscled it back into the center of the lane. At least this she could control. At least here she had power. Then she felt it: the first fraction of a second in which the traction of the front tire slipped on the wet metal and the power in the back tire pushed, and the laws of physics that had held her upright on the Broadway Bridge betrayed her.

  The next thing she felt was her helmet hitting the metal bridge. Then the sound of brakes screeching. A car horn. Then she was moving very fast, but on her back, staring up at the infrastructure of the drawbridge, her leather jacket dragging against the metal grate, the hot bulk of her bike skidding along the bridge on its side with a metallic roar. A second later everything went silent.

  Chapter 27

  Laura entered the hospital through the ER entrance and asked a woman at the intake desk for directions to her father’s room. The woman pointed to an elevator. Laura waited for a long time, breathing in the smell of disinfectant hiding urine. She pulled the Saint Laurent scarf out of the breast pocket of her suit and pressed it to her nose. The place smelled contagious.

  “Coming through,” a voice said behind her.

  Two EMTs headed toward the elevator, rolling an old woman on a hospital bed. One of the young men pushed a series of buttons on the elevator panel, and it opened immediately.

  “You can ride with us,” he said, holding the door for Laura.

  She did not want to be close to the woman in the gurney. The woman was clearly at the end of her life, about 120 years old by the look of her. An IV trailed off one of her papery arms, and the veins in her face stood out blue beneath her skin.

  “I think I’m going to be sick,” the woman murmured.

  One of the men slid a blue-gloved hand under her back and lifted her up. The other handed her a bag, and she spit in it.

  Her father was not like that, Laura thought. He was not frail with blue-gray skin. He was a tall, barrel-chested man with a broad smile and a firm handshake. She rode the elevator up to the cardiac ward.

  What if this was the end? What if it was all her fault?

  When Laura arrived at the cardiac ward, she found her sister, Natalie, installed at a small table in the hall, glaring at her laptop.

  “Welcome home,” Natalie said when she caught sight of Laura.

  “How is he?” Laura asked.

  Natalie shr
ugged. “He’s in the hospital.” Her face said, Because of you. She pointed to one of the rooms. “In there.”

  Cautiously, Laura pushed open the door to her father’s private room. Inside the room was quiet. The TV played silently above her father’s bed. And in the bed, Stan Enfield looked like a man feigning sleep. His body still exuded vigor. His cheeks were ruddy. His chest rose and fell in big, manly breaths.

  “Dad?”

  Still his eyes remained closed.

  Laura pulled up a chair, careful to lift it and move it rather than scrape it along the linoleum floor. She did not know if she should wake him or not.

  “Dad?”

  She touched his hand. It was warm. On another screen, a heart monitor noted a steady, even beat. Except for that, there was no equipment. No IV. No ventilator. No tubes running beneath the blankets.

  Her father’s eyelids flickered.

  “Dad.” Laura squeezed his hand.

  “How are you, Laura?”

  “I’m fine. How are you, Dad? Are you going to be all right? No one will talk to me. I didn’t mean for this to happen…” Laura trailed off.

  Stan continued to hold her hand, but with a feathery grip, not the strong grip of a professional hand shaker.

  “When a man and a woman,” he wheezed, “come together to bear a child, they put everything in God’s hands. They can’t say ‘I want one like this and one like that.’ They can’t say, ‘Make my child just like me, and let her support me in everything I do.’”

  “But I do support you.”

  Stan closed his eyes as if holding them open took too much energy.

  “But when a child grows up, when a person becomes an adult,” he continued, “it is possible to ask them to do what they know is right for their country.”

  Laura squeezed her father’s hand, then pulled away. There was another world in which he said, You know I’ll always love you. There was another world in which he said, As long as you are happy. That was what she wanted to hear. But happiness had nothing to do with the Enfield family.

  “John said this happened because of me,” Laura whispered.

  “I was shocked.”

  “Because I was with a woman? Do you really think it’s that wrong?”

  “Off the record?”

  “Yes.”

  Her father’s eyes flickered open.

  He coughed. “I don’t care about the gays. I care about America.”

  Laura knew she should drop it. She should ask him about his prognosis, about the nurses, about the hospital food. She should find a copy of one of the magazines he liked and read him interesting headlines while he dozed.

  Instead she said, “But you’ve campaigned on an anti-gay platform.”

  “Anti–gay marriage. And I’ve won, every time. We won. Don’t you see? It’s today’s issue. We get votes, and then we go on to do great things. And what do the gays lose? The right to be just as miserable as normal people, and we get to build the country up. I want to build America, Laura, but I thought I had more time.” He coughed again. “I don’t know if I’ll make it much longer.”

  “Don’t say that, Dad.”

  A nurse in blue scrubs entered the room.

  “We need to take your father down the hall for some tests,” the man said quietly.

  Laura rose slowly.

  “You’re going to be okay,” she said.

  Her father sighed. “I want to make America a better country, Laura. To do that I need votes, and this is how you get votes.” He spoke slowly. “You could run for office too. You know that, right?”

  “What if I was in love?” she asked.

  “If you pursue this thing with a woman, if you come out…you’ll never get the conservative vote, Laura. Never. You’ll win more, you’ll do more if you stay on our side.”

  The nurse cleared his throat. “We’d better get on with this,” he said more matter-of-factly than Laura thought appropriate.

  “I don’t want to be president,” Laura said.

  “But what if I were? What if this heart attack doesn’t kill me?” Her father pressed a hand to his chest. “They said I might not make it, but what if I do? I could win this. If you can just put your private life on hold for a few years.”

  Laura felt like she was sinking into quicksand.

  “What if you get reelected?”

  “Then it won’t matter. Hell, it’ll probably be a nonissue in six years.”

  “Really,” the nurse said, turning to Laura, “you should go.”

  She wondered if he was gay. Perhaps he had heard the whole conversation. Perhaps he resented tending to a conservative senator. But he did it. Everyone did what they had to do.

  Her father held out his hand. Reluctantly, Laura took it.

  “Can I count on your support?” he said.

  Chapter 28

  Tate blinked as several men in formal tuxedos surrounded her. One knelt down by her side.

  “Can you hear me?” He had a very high voice despite his massive girth and heavy beard.

  Her body felt numb. She tried to breathe. It felt like her lungs had been crushed.

  “I can’t breathe,” she gasped.

  “What happened?” someone else called.

  Tate felt a sharp pain radiating from her foot up through her leg and into her groin.

  “Get that bike off her,” the man said, his falsetto at odds with his authoritative demeanor. “I’m a nurse. You’re going to be okay.”

  A moment later the pain in her leg subsided.

  The nurse squeezed her hand.

  “Can you feel this?”

  “What happened?” Tate whispered. “Where am I?”

  “Can you feel this?” the man repeated.

  He squeezed harder.

  “Yes.”

  Somewhere through the rain and the crowd of legs, Tate thought she saw the puff of a tutu in the crowd of black-and-white suits.

  “Am I dreaming?” she asked.

  The man reached over and pulled one of her eyelids open.

  “Someone get me a phone light!” he barked.

  A moment later, the bright light of a cell phone’s flashbulb seared her retina.

  “Stop.” Tate struggled in his grip.

  “Don’t move,” the man said. Then, as if by habit more than to communicate with anyone, he announced, “Normal pupil dilation.” He squeezed her other hand. “Can you feel this?”

  “Yes.” Tate pulled her hand away. The bridge was coming back into focus.

  The man was not deterred. He touched her leg at the thigh, the knee, and the foot. Tate yelped when he touched the foot that had been trapped beneath the bike. Then he asked her to push against his palm, pull his hand toward her, and resist as he pushed his hand against hers.

  “Okay. I’m going to take your helmet off. Let me know if you feel any pain.”

  Carefully, the man removed her helmet.

  “Follow my finger with your eyes.”

  “I’m fine,” Tate said, although her leg throbbed with a hot pain. She watched the man’s finger move back and forth across her field of vision. “I really am okay.”

  “Now stick out your tongue and move it side to side.”

  “Really!” she protested.

  She struggled to a sitting position. Behind the nurse, she saw several of the other tuxedoed men directing traffic. One was indeed wearing a tutu over his tux. It was surreal.

  “Where are you all going?” she asked.

  “Just stick out your tongue.”

  “I told you, I’m fine,” Tate said over her extended tongue.

  “No sign of brain injury,” the nurse said, “but we’ll want to check you for concussion.”

  A couple of cyclists had also stopped nearby, as well as an old woman in a pickup. She got out of her truck and stood over Tate, her wiry gray hair emerging from beneath a John Deere baseball cap.

  “What happened?” she asked.

  “She must have spun out in the rain,” the nur
se said.

  “This bridge is hell.” The woman took a cigarette pack from her shirt pocket and lit one, shielding it from the rain in her cupped hand. She offered the pack to Tate, who shook her head.

  “How’s the bike?” she growled.

  “Oh, God, I don’t know,” the nurse said. “Those things terrify me.” He straightened his bow tie.

  “Why y’all dressed up?” the woman asked.

  “Portland Gay Men’s Choir.” The nurse gestured toward his van. “We’re on the way to a concert.”

  The woman sniffed.

  The nurse turned back to Tate.

  “We should get you to a hospital,” he said. “We don’t mind. My boys and I’ll take you.”

  Tate shook her head. She felt battered. The pain in her foot made her eyes water. But she was lucky. She hadn’t been going fast. She flexed her arms gingerly.

  “I’m okay.”

  “That was a nasty spill. I saw it. One minute you were up, and then bam!” the nurse said.

  Now that the immediate emergency was over, he had the delivery of a cooking-show host. I just throw the garlic in and bam!

  Tate rose, holding on to the guardrail to steady herself. Once on her feet, her vision blurred for a moment, then returned to normal. Her foot hurt, but she could put weight on it. She looked over the edge of the bridge. The smell of the river rose to meet her, cool and dark. On either side of the bridge, the lights of the city glittered.

  “I’ll be okay.”

  “You should really be checked out by a doctor,” the nurse insisted.

  She put her hand on the nurse’s shoulder.

  “You’re sweet. Thank you. But right now a doctor’s bill would hurt a lot more than this.”

  “Oh, no honey,” the man said, putting a massive arm around Tate’s waist to steady her as she swayed in the breeze that came up through the metal grate of the bridge. “You’re looking awfully pale.”