For Good

by Karelia Stetz-Waters

“Oh my God. I’m coming.” And a deeper voice inside her whispered, You did that to me, Marydale. Marydale! When Kristen had relaxed again, Marydale rolled off her, her smile all pride and accomplishment.

  “Wow.” Kristen stared up at the ceiling until her breath returned to its normal rhythm. “I never…”

  Kristen rolled onto her side. She stroked the length of Marydale’s body, across her breasts, flattened now by gravity, and across her hip and her belly. Then she trailed her fingers through the hair above Marydale’s sex.

  “May I?” Kristen asked.

  The smile faded from Marydale’s eyes. “You don’t have to.”

  “I want to.”

  Something about the tension in Marydale’s jaw made her look like someone steeling herself for a blow. Kristen touched her very, very gently.

  “I’ve got to pay attention,” she said, searching Marydale’s face. “Is there anything I should know? What you like? Don’t like?”

  “I don’t know,” Marydale whispered.

  Kristen stroked Marydale’s thighs, feeling the cords of muscle.

  “You don’t know?” Very gently Kristen touched the curls above Marydale’s sex.

  “I mean…not really.”

  Slowly Kristen moved her hand between Marydale’s open thighs and slipped the tip of her finger between Marydale’s legs, closing her eyes for a second to better feel the structure of her body. This is the first time, Kristen thought. Marydale’s body felt so delicate, her skin so soft, the moisture of her sex so shy and intimate. Kristen was almost afraid to touch her, afraid to hurt her.

  “Oh,” Marydale whispered, but although her hips lifted toward Kristen’s touch, her eyes remained focused on the ceiling.

  “What if I don’t find your clit?” Kristen rubbed Marydale’s mons, moving the soft flesh around again and again until Marydale’s eyes finally met hers again. “I’ve heard it’s very hard to find. Is it here?”

  Marydale gasped. She pressed her hips against Kristen’s hand, as if trying to guide her, but Kristen moved her touch to the side of Marydale’s sex and massaged her outer labia.

  “Or here?”

  Now Marydale smiled. “You’re teasing me.”

  “I don’t know what I’m doing,” Kristen said. “Women are very complicated.”

  “Please,” Marydale breathed.

  “Tell me if I get it wrong,” Kristen said. She found Marydale’s clit shielded in a mantle of swollen flesh and circled the tip with her finger so lightly only molecules of their bodies touched. All the while Marydale’s breath came in little gasps like white-capped waves on the ocean. Kristen traced the circle again and again.

  “There,” Marydale gasped.

  “Can you feel this?” Kristen slowed her breathing. “This?”

  She was surprised how easy it was to ask. Questions like that had always made her self-conscious, and the corresponding requests had always made her feel vaguely put upon—rub harder, pinch it there—as though she were in some naughty ceramics class. But she wanted to talk to Marydale, to hold her close with her touch and her kiss and her words.

  Kristen slid two fingers into Marydale’s body, surprised by how complex she was inside, not just a smooth sheath like the inside of a condom, but ridged in some places and thick and swollen in others.

  “Is this okay?” Kristen breathed, easing her fingers in and out and over Marydale’s clit and back inside her.

  “I think you know what you’re doing.” Marydale’s voice was rough.

  And Kristen felt like she did.

  “I’m glad I’m your first girl,” Marydale said, pressing her hips up to meet Kristen’s hand.

  Kristen leaned down and kissed her, a deep kiss matched by the movement of her fingers. Kristen wished she could touch Marydale everywhere all at once. They kissed until Marydale’s back arched and her fingers dug into the sheets. Kristen released her from the kiss and continued to stroke her.

  “You’re killing me.” Marydale groaned, but she was smiling, and Kristen thought that nothing had ever flattered her more.

  “What should I do now?” Kristen asked.

  “Harder,” Marydale begged.

  Kristen pressed down, rubbing faster as Marydale’s breath raced. Then Marydale lifted her head off the pillow, her mouth open, her legs closed around Kristen’s hand.

  “Oh God!” she cried.

  When she fell back against the pillows, Kristen could see she was laughing.

  Early in the morning, before dawn had brightened the windows, Kristen felt Marydale rise.

  “I’ve got to work,” she whispered, pressing her lips to Kristen’s forehead. “Will you be here when I get back?”

  “I don’t know.” Sleep held Kristen down. “I might be at work. When do you get off?”

  Marydale knelt down on the floor beside the bed, her face close to Kristen’s. “I mean, will you be here? Will you stay?”

  Kristen blinked and rose on her elbow. She cupped Marydale’s face. “You mean forever? I don’t know,” she said gently. “I can’t promise you that.”

  “But tomorrow?”

  “Of course I’ll be here tomorrow.”

  10

  Everything about the diner was familiar, from the watered-down ketchup to Mr. Fisher’s complaint that the meat loaf used to be better. But today it glowed. Even the dust on the faded plastic flowers in the window ledges caught the sunlight and cast shadows. And Marydale had the feeling the world had gotten larger because everything had come closer: the smooth polish on the plates, the origami of newsprint crumpled on an empty table. Every detail was beautiful, and she tried not to think about the past or the future.

  “Marydale, I need you to take table twelve,” Frank called out from the kitchen. “I know it’s Tippany’s section.”

  “Sure,” she answered without question.

  Four men sat at the table. She didn’t recognize them from town. The youngest must have been nineteen or twenty and the oldest seventy, but they all wore the same pale, starched shirts. The older men wore large wire-frame glasses with lenses that extended down their cheeks, as though they might grow a second set of eyes under the ones they had now.

  “Wicked are the ways of the world,” one said as she approached.

  “And they let her work here?” The youngest man still had the decency to whisper.

  “We are bathed in sin.” His older companion nodded seriously. “But the harlot always wears a tin crown.”

  Marydale had met men like this before: voyeurs from little towns like Spent, Hayrail, and Deten. They thought a feeble attempt at proselytizing and some talk about sin pitched so she could hear it excused their curiosity. She didn’t care. If they knew, Kristen knew.

  She whipped their plates onto the table with practiced efficiency, noticing that Frank had undercooked their hash browns and left off their bacon.

  “You okay?” he asked after they left.

  She had almost forgotten about the men. She had barely noticed them. But she said, “It’s slow. Could I take the rest of the day off?”

  Frank looked around grudgingly. “Yeah. Go.”

  The Firesteed Summit looked almost as beautiful in the daylight as it did at night, although in the daylight she could see the smoke from the California wildfires blurring the distance. Marydale sat in the back of her truck, one arm wrapped around Lilith. She rubbed her knuckles against the dog’s wide, flat head. Lilith looked up at her with beady eyes.

  “It’s not going to last, is it, girl?” she said.

  Lilith just turned her head to the vista. Marydale did, too, trying to focus on the last detail she could see before the landscape disappeared into the smoke. Was it a barn? The outline of an irrigation circle? A road she wasn’t allowed to drive on because the conditions of her parole bound her to Tristess County the way blood and marriage bound everyone else. She had been ready to leave when Aaron Holten had reared up behind her, his thick arms bowing out at his sides like a cartoon strongman. I’m going to sho
w you what a real man does.

  Back at home, Marydale decided not to cook dinner until she had talked to Kristen, but by four in the afternoon, she had been waiting so intensely, her anticipation hung in the air like the high-pitched buzz of long-distance power lines. She went out into her garden and picked greens for a salad, then thawed a breast of chicken. Then she was putting a potpie in the oven. It seemed like time in the kitchen expanded while the clock’s count of seconds slowed to a crawl. Finally, at six thirty, Kristen’s car pulled into the driveway. Marydale froze, a towel in her hands.

  “What a fucking day!” Kristen called out as she entered the house. “I am so glad to be home.”

  Home.

  Kristen slowed down as she entered the kitchen. “Hey,” she said, her voice softening.

  Marydale wanted to fall into her arms. “Hey.”

  Kristen crossed the kitchen floor, leaned up on tiptoes, and kissed Marydale on the lips, in the kitchen, with the lights on and her briefcase in her hand. Marydale wrapped her arms around Kristen and held her close, trying to breathe in every detail.

  Marydale spoke into Kristen’s hair. “We have to talk.”

  Kristen stepped back. “That doesn’t sound good.”

  “Not like that,” Marydale said quickly. “I just…I want to…We have to talk about my story…my past. I mean maybe we don’t have to, but we haven’t.”

  Kristen put her bag down and took Marydale’s hand. “About your parents?”

  It was all so obvious. Even the old men from Spent knew. Only the memory of her poor mother, bless her, kept it from the lips of the town gossips. Now, with Kristen watching her, touching her, Marydale didn’t know how to begin.

  “I’ve never had a boyfriend or wanted one, not even when I was a kid,” she said. “And I’ve been with women. A lot, I guess. But never like last night.”

  “What do you mean?” Kristen asked gently.

  “A lot of the girls around here think it’s a sin. We’d kiss, but that’s all. And when I was in, no one was ever gentle with me. There wasn’t time.”

  “Someone forced you?” Kristen asked.

  “No.” Marydale hesitated.

  Kristen’s forehead was smooth, but her face was full of worry. Marydale touched the silky sweep of her hair.

  “You know I was in the Holten Penitentiary, right?”

  Kristen stepped back. “What?” Shock and confusion spread across her face.

  “Oh God,” Marydale said. “They didn’t tell you.”

  “Who told me?” Kristen turned like a boxer anticipating a blow.

  “Everyone knows.” Marydale was surprised by her own voice because there was no air in her lungs.

  Kristen picked up her briefcase. “Tell me what?” Her voice was cold.

  “I was in prison.” Marydale couldn’t look up.

  “Convicted?”

  “Yes.”

  “Of what?”

  Marydale sank into a chair. The smell of burning potpie filled the kitchen.

  “No one talks about it, but they talk about it all the time. They talk about it without talking about it. But they didn’t tell you.”

  “What were you in prison for?” Kristen demanded.

  “When you came into the restaurant the first time, I liked you so much. And then you came back and you moved in. I thought maybe they’d told you. Maybe it didn’t matter.”

  “What were you in prison for?” The question pressed against Marydale’s chest, crushing her breath. “What the hell were you in for?”

  “Murder.”

  Kristen stumbled back, tripping on a peeling seam in the linoleum.

  “Was it a DUI? Were you drinking that shitty whiskey and driving?”

  “I would never do that.”

  “Then what?”

  “I killed a boy named Aaron Holten. He is…He was Ronald Holten’s nephew.” There it was. The newspaper had told a hundred versions of the story, but they all led to that night. “I was young.”

  “You’re fucking young now!” Kristen said in a tone Marydale had never heard before. “I am the prosecutor in your town! You asked me to live with you. You fucked me. I’m not even supposed to go into bars. I could lose my job. I could lose my license, everything I’ve worked for! And you didn’t once think that you should mention that you were a felon? A murderer.”

  Kristen clutched her briefcase to her chest. “I’m going to go to my room. I want you to leave the house, give me two hours. I won’t be here when you get back, and don’t come after me. Don’t talk to me. I don’t know you. You had no right…” She took another step back. “You don’t have the right to look at me.”

  With that she left.

  Slowly Marydale undid her apron, crumpling the soft cotton in her hands. She looked around the room at the faded wallpaper and painted cupboards, just old paper and old paint, all of it laid down by her father.

  And she remembered Gulu pulling her aside, an arm around her neck, half embrace, half throttle. You’re on the new, so I’m gonna give you some advice, Gulu had said. You cry too much. With that, she had punched Marydale in the stomach, knocking her breath out. While she was struggling to inhale, Gulu had pulled her close and whispered into her hair, Crying works sometimes. Even some of these bitches’ll soften up for a little fluff like you, and the bulls, too. But you’re in it for a dime, and sometimes, in here, the only thing you got at the end of the day is you not crying.

  11

  The VACANCY sign was on at the Almost Home Motel. Of course it was, Kristen thought. Tristess wasn’t a place to visit. These guests weren’t tourists. This was where failed ranchers went to die and men named Bubba went to pass sexually transmitted diseases to teenagers named Brandissa or Starr. And there weren’t even enough of those to fill the building.

  Behind the front desk, a young man greeted her with a monotone, “Welcome to the Almost Home. You’re almost home at the Almost Home.”

  “God, I hope not,” Kristen said.

  “Pardon?” the boy asked.

  “I’d like a room for the night.”

  Kristen couldn’t remember her license plate, and when the boy asked for her credit card, it took her a moment to understand the request. When she opened the door to her room, she was startled to see that it looked exactly like her earlier stay, although what she had expected she didn’t know.

  She didn’t bother bringing in her suitcases. She set her laptop on the table and typed Marydale Rae Tristess Oregon murder. The headlines were almost eight years old, but the search engine brought them instantly back to life. LESBIAN LOVE TRIANGLE ENDS IN MURDER. RODEO KILLER TO BE TRIED AS ADULT. The articles all featured the same photograph. A younger Marydale, sitting on top of a pyramid of hay bales surrounded by five other girls. The five wore tiaras; Marydale wore a crown. They were all pretty and blond, but Marydale looked like the original after which the other girls had been imperfectly modeled.

  The article said she had been seventeen at the time, a volunteer for the American Veterans Support Network, treasurer for the local chapter of Future Farmers of America, and the Tristess rodeo queen three years running. Most of the articles mentioned that she had been orphaned. A few mentioned that she had been researching colleges and wanted to study psychology and eventually get her master’s in counseling. I want to serve other people, the young Marydale was quoted. Whether it’s tutoring someone at school or helping one of our servicemen find community back home, helping others is the most rewarding thing you can do.

  Nonetheless, on the night of the rodeo coronation, Marydale lured champion calf roper, honor student, and rancher Aaron Holten to her barn and killed him. She waited for him in the hayloft, and when he was halfway up the two-story ladder, she threw three hay bales at him in quick succession. The third bale knocked him off the ladder and to his death. They can weigh up to a hundred pounds, maybe more if they’re spoiled, a local rancher was quoted as saying. The DA told reporters that Marydale had lured Aaron over with offers of sex. Judg
e Kip Spencer had presided over the case.

  After the murder, the story unfolded to the town’s horror and fascination. Everyone who had contact with Marydale had something to say, and the Tristess Tribune interviewed them all. Apparently, it was common knowledge that Aaron had courted Marydale for years and that she had rebuffed him. What the town hadn’t known was that Marydale had seduced her friend Aubrey Thomsich. She was wild, Aubrey told the local paper. I knew it was wrong what we did, but life was always exciting with Marydale. The local preacher suggested that the grief over her parents’ deaths had turned her from the right path. One of Marydale’s classmates said that Marydale had always looked at her with the eyes of lechery.

  The accompanying picture showed Marydale putting her arms around a dog with a cast on its front leg. Kristen stopped at the photograph, touching the screen with her fingertip. It didn’t take a trial attorney to see that the town had turned on her. The accounts of her deviance were stacked up against her honors and accolades, as though somehow being a beautiful orphan and a junior soroptimist made the murder of Aaron Holten worse.

  Kristen picked up her phone to call…someone. Her hands shook. Who could she call? The last thing Sierra needed was one more person in her life making bad decisions that would appear, to Sierra, as romantic adventures. Donna would love the whole thing. She might be stuck with the Lubbock, Texas, divorce, but Kristen had fucked a convicted murderer two months into her first job as DA.

  No, not fucked. Kristen stared at Marydale’s picture on her screen. She had fucked the Mad-Dog-drinking philosophy major and a half dozen other men who had felt, momentarily, like answers to some question her body kept posing.

  She lay down on the bed.

  “Marydale,” she whispered, and tears came so suddenly to her eyes, they felt like they belonged to someone else. “How could you do this to me?” She pressed her face into the orange coverlet, not even thinking about how many times it had not been washed. “How could you not tell me?”