For Good

by Karelia Stetz-Waters

  “I’m so sorry. We were just closing up,” she said when the lawyer reached her. “But I could get you a piece of pie to go.”

  “No. I…wanted to talk to you about that room for rent.” The lawyer’s brow creased over the frames of her glasses.

  Marydale swallowed and shoved her hands in her jeans pockets, pretending she didn’t know what was coming next. The lawyer would say it had been an inappropriate offer. I’m the DA…I talked to your PO…

  “It’s got a great view of the mountains,” Marydale offered. “And if you got a burro or two, we could put them up in the barn.” Marydale waited for the lawyer to tell her it was no joking matter. Marydale ought to know she wasn’t a free woman. Just because she was out of prison didn’t mean she could make decisions like everybody else; she’d given up that right.

  “What the hell is a burro?” the lawyer asked.

  “A small donkey…for packing.”

  “Packing my used gun?”

  It took Marydale a moment to make sense of the comment, and then she felt a warm glow light her chest. The lawyer had remembered their banter in the diner. She had noticed.

  From down the street a man’s voice called out, “We don’t need you ’round here. You need to go back where you came from.”

  For a second, adrenaline seized Marydale’s body. She remembered a woman from the penitentiary, Grace-Louise her name was, but everyone called her Gulu. She saw her striding down the block, her prison-issue jeans slung low around her hips, the sharpened end of a ballpoint pen pinging against the bars. She’ll cut a new boot like you just ’cause you’re scared, Marydale’s cellmate had whispered, stepping back against the far wall of their cell. You better learn to fight. Now Marydale took a deep breath. You’re out, she told herself. You’re out. You’re out.

  Anyway, it was just a pair of young ranch hands stumbling home from the Lariat Lounge, probably drinking with fake IDs.

  “He doesn’t mean you,” Marydale said quietly. In a louder, more cheerful voice, she added, “You boys get on home.”

  “But I could fuck you,” the other man yelled.

  “That’s no way to talk to a lady,” Marydale said.

  “She’s not gonna fuck you, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

  The pair staggered in their direction.

  Marydale whistled. From the bed of her pickup in the parking lot, Lilith appeared like a flash of motion in headlights. A second later, she had skidded to a stop at Marydale’s feet.

  “What the…” the men exclaimed.

  “Walk away,” Marydale said. “We’re having a conversation here.”

  “Cops’ll shoot your dog,” the first man yelled.

  “You ain’t supposed to have a dog like that!” his friend added.

  Lilith revealed a row of sharp white teeth wedged into pink gums.

  “That won’t mean much when your face is in her belly.”

  The men staggered back.

  When they were a safe distance away, the lawyer laughed nervously. “I’d like to have you on my side in a bar fight.”

  “You call me anytime,” Marydale said.

  They both hesitated for a moment.

  “Are you off work?” the lawyer asked.

  “Basically.”

  She adjusted her glasses. “I’m Kristen.” She held out her hand. “I don’t think we’ve been officially introduced.”

  “You don’t have to be introduced in Tristess. Especially you. You’re the most interesting woman in town.”

  “I’ve never been the most interesting anything,” Kristen said dryly.

  Marydale twirled a length of hair around her finger and tucked it behind her ear. Aldean would say, Girls want a little chase. Make ’em think you’re not interested. But the girls in Tristess weren’t interested. That was the problem.

  The men had paused at the end of the block to pee or to argue.

  “You want to walk?” Kristen asked, gesturing in the other direction.

  Marydale said “yes” too quickly.

  “About the room,” Kristen began as they set off.

  “I’m sorry about that,” Marydale said. “I know I shouldn’t have mentioned it.”

  “Ah, shit,” Kristen said. “Did I just do that that thing where someone makes an offer like ‘come by anytime,’ but you’re not actually supposed to come by, and you do, and it’s awkward?”

  “No. I meant it!” Marydale said. “I’m just surprised. You’re the DA and all. Come by anytime.”

  Kristen laughed. Marydale recited the address, and Kristen typed it into her phone. Marydale expected Kristen to turn back toward the motel, but she didn’t, and the cool breeze at their back seemed to carry them forward.

  “What’s it like living in a town where everyone knows everyone?” Kristen asked.

  And before Marydale knew, they were talking, and Kristen’s casual questions reminded her of Aldean. There was no hidden meaning behind her small talk.

  “Do you like working at the diner?” Kristen asked, not Frank’s a good man to give you this chance, ain’t he?

  “It’s all right,” Marydale said. “I hear a lot of gossip.”

  “What’s the best thing you’ve heard?” Kristen asked.

  Marydale paused. People in town didn’t talk about the best gossip. Only one really interesting thing had ever happened in Tristess, and Marydale knew that story too well, even if people in town didn’t tell it out of deference to her poor, dear mother.

  “You’ve heard of a Landrace?” Marydale asked.

  “You mean like a 5K, like a run?”

  Marydale smiled. “It’s a kind of swine. I heard Mrs. Woodrow say”—she added a little twang to her voice—”that she heard from Ella at the bank that last year at the county fair when Lu-Anne Stewart’s boy, Kent, showed his Landrace and won the blue ribbon for heaviest year-old, it wasn’t a true Landrace.” She paused, lowing her voice with mock seriousness. “The National Swine Registry won’t record a Landrace with less than six functional teats on each side of the underline, and Mrs. Woodrow said Ella saw an inverted teat on the back left side.”

  Kristen stopped, her smile cocked at an incredulous angle. “That’s a thing?”

  “Ella thinks Lu-Anne paid off the judge.”

  “With what?”

  Marydale imitated Mrs. Woodrow’s shocked whisper. “I can’t say, but she has the harlot’s mark on her.”

  Kristen chuckled. “Sounds like Portland law: who slept with whose paralegal, which big firm is stealing which clients. No one tells me anything here.” She shook her head.

  “You’re new,” Marydale said. “They’ll warm up to you.”

  The sidewalk narrowed, and Marydale fell into step behind Kristen. Kristen did look like a librarian with her tortoiseshell glasses and her gray suit fitted a bit too tightly around her ass. She probably hated the way her jacket flared up in back and strained a little at the seams, but Marydale didn’t mind.

  Marydale wanted to take her hand. No, it was more than a want. It was that familiar feeling that there was another life, another world where another Marydale was walking hand in hand with a woman like Kristen. If she could just close her eyes or run fast enough or sprinkle gold dust…but that was what Aldean was always warning her about.

  “This guy Ronald Holten offered me a house to rent for free,” Kristen said. “Do you know anything about him? I just got this feeling…I’m not used to taking anything for free.”

  Kristen stared up at a streetlight. In profile, she looked like one of the Greek statues in Holten State Penitentiary’s Encyclopedia of Western Culture, plain but in a way that made other women look cheap.

  “The Holtens always want something,” Marydale said. “There are people in town who won’t like you for turning down Ronald Holten. Things would be easier for you if you said yes, but…I’d say no.”

  They had arrived at the little grass octagon that served as the town “square.” In the center, a wooden gazebo housed the Pioneer
Poison Well.

  “Easier how?” Kristen asked.

  “Just easier.”

  “That’s cryptic.”

  “He owns everything. He likes it that way.”

  They stepped into the darkness of the gazebo. The well was a concrete barrel with metal bars across the top and a plaque documenting the forty-seven pioneers poisoned by the water. Marydale leaned over, feeling, as she always did, that if she had anything precious, it would slip off her like a necklace and plunge into the blackness.

  “That’s a depressing fucking monument,” Kristen said.

  Marydale laughed in surprise. “No shit. Everybody loves the Poison Well. Tristess has a day. People dress up. I say it was just bad, fucking luck. A bunch of pioneers got this far, probably killed how many Indians, and then died from drinking the water.”

  Kristen leaned over, too, the crowns of their heads almost touching.

  “What do you get if you throw a coin in? Bad karma?”

  “Must be,” Marydale said. “I’ve thrown a lot of coins in.”

  6

  After work the following day, Kristen put Marydale’s address in her phone’s GPS, but no directions were necessary. She scanned the map. It might as well have said, Go north until you pass the end of nowhere.

  When Gulch Creek Road turned to gravel with no sign of reverting back to pavement, Kristen called Donna.

  “Hey, listen. I’m going to give you an address,” Kristen said. “On the off chance that you never hear from me again, this is where my body’s at.”

  “What? Where are you?”

  The only sign of human habitation—besides the road itself—was a collection of buildings at the end of a long driveway. They looked like litter swept up by a giant broom and deposited at the foot of the Firesteed Mountains.

  “I’m looking at a room to rent. I met this waitress at the local diner.”

  “Do you really think she’s dangerous?”

  “I’m kidding,” Kristen said.

  Gravel rumbled under the car as Kristen neared the end of the drive. Marydale’s house looked like a child’s drawing, too narrow to be real, with a peaked roof and four identical windows. A porch circled the house, and Marydale sat on the porch swing, her dog at her feet, a book in her hands. The whole scene looked like the soft-focus shot at the end of a pharmaceutical commercial, the one that played while a compassionate voice-over listed the side effects, like dry mouth and instant death. Only this was the real thing and actually beautiful.

  “I’ve got nothing to worry about,” Kristen said in a tone she kind of hoped conveyed I’ve got a lot to worry about, being such an important public figure, but, naturally, I have everything under control.

  “Kristen. You came!” Marydale called as Kristen got out of her car.

  She smiled, and Kristen could see the dark space where her tooth should have been.

  “I’ll show you around. It’s not much, but it’s nicer than the Almost Home.” Marydale pushed the front door open. “How was your day?”

  “The public defender keeps referring to me as a female attorney; a female should understand these things.”

  “Breeding stock. It’s good for the gene pool,” Marydale said so seriously, it took Kristen a moment to realize she was joking.

  “I thought people hated out-of-towners.”

  “Love-hate,” Marydale said, looking coquettishly over her shoulder.

  Inside, a faded portrait hung by the front door, featuring a girl of about ten and two older women dressed in so many sequins they looked like drag queens.

  “Three generations of rodeo queens,” Marydale said, following Kristen’s gaze.

  Kristen looked at the child.

  “That’s you.”

  The girl’s smile was wide and practiced. The mother and grandmother looked like they were separated by no more than fifteen years.

  “Three years running,” Marydale said. “My mother always said you could be pretty or you could be lucky.” She touched her fingers to the woman in the center of the photograph. She clicked her tongue. “We were pretty. Come on.”

  The tour of the house took five minutes. Downstairs there was a living room, dining room, kitchen, bathroom, and a pantry Marydale called the canning cellar. Upstairs there was a bathroom and two bedrooms, both of them furnished but impersonal, one with stacks of library books on the dresser.

  “I’ve been using this one, but we can trade if you like.” Marydale tucked a length of hair behind her ear. “I know you’re probably used to something nicer. I mean, before the Almost Home.”

  “I don’t have to share a room with my sister. It’s a step up,” Kristen said.

  Marydale led her back downstairs and onto the porch.

  “Try this.” Marydale retrieved a growler from beneath the porch swing and produced two small canning jars. She poured an inch of cedar-colored liquid into each jar.

  Kristen took a sip and coughed. It was awful, but there was a hint of something sweet behind the burn of bottom-shelf alcohol, a kind of smoky-floral taste the philosophy major might just have done the honor of deeming bourgeois.

  “It’s not bad. If you know what to expect,” Kristen said.

  Marydale laughed. “I’ll take it.”

  They discussed the details of the rental. Month to month. Shared utilities. The cord of wood. Marydale said she was happy to have a roommate, and Kristen promised to draw up a contract on paper. They finished their whiskey, and Kristen knew it was time to go, but the idea of one last night reading legal briefs in a stuffy room at the Almost Home wasn’t particularly appealing.

  “Do your parents still live around here?” Kristen asked.

  “They passed.” Marydale walked to the porch railing and looked out.

  “I’m sorry.”

  The land around the house was dry and brown, except for a patch of sunflowers. Squash vines and tomatoes tangled around their feet, and their heads turned toward the sun setting behind the house. Kristen watched Marydale’s profile in the golden light.

  “I miss my mom.” Marydale pursed her lips in an apologetic smile. “It’s all been such a mess. If I had a dollar for everyone who told me I should feel lucky my folks aren’t around to see what I’ve done with my life…”

  “You’d be rich a woman?”

  “I’d be something.”

  “People are assholes. What’s wrong with being a waitress?”

  If Marydale had teared up and started a long-winded rendition of her life story, Kristen would have mumbled something about needing to study the next day’s docket, but Marydale just shook her head.

  “You miss her. That’s something,” Kristen added. “I haven’t talked to my mother in more than a year, and I don’t miss her. A year isn’t long enough.”

  “But she’s your mom.” It wasn’t an accusation.

  “She’s living in Vancouver with some guy she met on an app call Cream Meet.”

  “Ooh. Grade A,” Marydale said. “I bet he’s fabulous.”

  If Donna had said it, Kristen would have told her to fuck off, but if Donna had said it, it would have been a jibe. My parents might not speak English, but at least they’re not picking up drunks at the Tik Toc Bar. Marydale smiled slightly and looked down, just missing Kristen’s eyes. And Kristen felt like Marydale was holding open a door. Come on in, she seemed to be saying. We’re friends now.

  “The last time I talked to her, she wanted me to buy her a whole set of recording equipment from Craigslist,” Kristen said. “She’d been to some seminar that told her she had to manifest the dream in real life.”

  “And her dream is to own a recording studio?”

  “She thinks she’s a singer. She wants to be a star, but all she does is karaoke bars and guys at karaoke bars. And she sends videos to those reality TV shows. She got called in for an audition once, and they aired it for two seconds along with a bunch of other train wrecks. She thought she was going to be discovered.”

  “Did you buy it for her?”
Marydale asked, but her face said she knew Kristen wouldn’t do that.

  “No.”

  “What did you tell her?”

  “I was so mad about that fucking equipment.” It felt good to say it out loud. She remembered her mother wheedling on the phone. You always were my girl, Kristi.

  “She shouldn’t have asked,” Marydale said.

  “When I said no, she tried to get my sister, Sierra, to drop out of high school and manifest the dream with her. They were going to be a duo.” Kristen remembered the tiny apartment she had shared with Sierra, their cramped bedroom with their two twin beds. They were like orphans or spinsters, except that Sierra wanted to go clubbing in Old Town. “I told her Sierra needed to manifest high school. She needed to manifest college. Sierra’s smart. If she’d just focus, she could do anything. I wasn’t going to let my mother ruin that for her. My mom said I was stifling Sierra’s inner light or something ridiculous.”

  “You’re a good sister.”

  “I wish. We don’t have anything in common. We don’t do anything together.”

  “That means a lot.” Marydale shrugged. “If you were best friends, it’d be easy. My mother always said, ‘You don’t get points for easy.’” Marydale looked up at the evening sky. “Hey, can I show you something? It’s behind the house.”

  On their way past the little garden, Marydale reached up to one of the sunflowers. It was a foot taller than she was. She pulled it toward her and pressed her face into its dark center.

  “They don’t really smell,” she said. “My mother used to say they just give you a kiss.”

  She beckoned to Kristen. “Can I give you a kiss?”

  Kristen stepped back, startled, but Marydale only wanted to guide the flower to her face.

  “I think you can smell the whole earth in a sunflower,” Marydale said, then laughed. “That’s the kind of corny thing people say out here, isn’t it? You don’t go around smelling things in Portland, do you?”