For Good

by Karelia Stetz-Waters

  Marydale turned away, and Kristen gazed at her profile outlined in snow. Her lips were full and glistened with a touch of gloss. There were a few fine lines beside her eyes, a faint shadow beneath them, the kind of imperfections Kristen hid behind her glasses, but they didn’t look like imperfections on Marydale.

  “In my experience, these things are always better if you’re just honest,” Marydale said.

  “These things?”

  Marydale shrugged. “We don’t even know each other. Let’s skip the brunches and just chalk it up to life experience. If you’d wanted to find me, you would have.” With that, Marydale turned and headed back into the bar.

  “Wait,” Kristen said.

  “This is a coincidence,” Marydale called out behind her. “This is New Year’s Eve. It’s snowing. It doesn’t change anything.”

  Kristen took a few steps and stopped. She steadied herself against a mound of snow, the icy crust burning her fingers.

  “Marydale,” she whispered.

  And there was the truth, realized, as if in dream, impossible and absolute: she had loved Marydale, and when she had left Tristess, the trajectory of her life had stopped, and she had done nothing.

  2

  Kristen made her way back toward the hotel complex like a patient in receipt of bad news. She wasn’t even sure how she found the bar where Sierra and her friends were listening to the band. Inside the humid room, Frog moved from guest to guest, anointing them with glitter gel from a little pot. As Kristen entered, he approached her with a finger full of goop. Before Kristen could protest, he had smeared it on Kristen’s cheek. It smelled like patchouli.

  “Happy New Year,” he said.

  Kristen wiped at the cold gel.

  The bar was crowded, the guests in everything from cocktail dresses to cargoes. Reluctantly, she took a seat with Sierra and Moss.

  Moss adjusted his man-skirt and leaned in to listen to Sierra.

  “Sometimes I think we’ve gotten too big,” she said, projecting her voice over the music. “You know? What happened to running everything out of a van and a laptop?”

  Ordinarily, Kristen would have pointed out that running an online magazine from a dilapidated bungalow, with a sagging green roof, in which one or two (or six or more) people lived at any given time, was hardly selling out to corporate America. As it was, she just stared past Sierra at the crowd of revelers.

  “We were following our heart path back then,” Moss said.

  “That’s what I’m talking about,” Sierra said. “Are we doing what we set out to?” Her eyes were bright, and Kristen guessed she had gotten there via a fully stamped whiskey passport.

  The trio continued their conversation. Sierra thought maybe they should demonetize the HumAnarchist blog. Moss had been researching his great-grandfather’s logging camp. He wanted to write a story on the birth of the lumbersexual. He was thinking about getting the periodic table tattooed on his arm, to help him remember the fundamentals.

  Kristen checked her phone. She wished there were a way to hurry the clock to midnight so they could toast. Sierra could kiss her entourage. Kristen could retreat to her room. She was so lost in thought that it took her a moment to realize Sierra was talking to her.

  “Hey, it’s that bartender,” Sierra said. “Did you know her?”

  Kristen turned quickly, gracelessly, her eyes meeting Marydale’s instantly. She stared. Marydale had traced her lips in a dark red lipstick and traded the Sadfire T-shirt for a black blouse with a Western-style yoke, her sleeves rolled up to reveal her tattoos. Everyone in Portland had tattoos, and everyone wanted to be a cowgirl hipster, but somehow it was clear Marydale wasn’t being ironic. She hadn’t fashioned an image of herself after her logger grandfather, and she hadn’t gotten the tattoos to reject the corporatizing of her profitable anarchist blog. She just was: motionless and beautiful and stern. And Kristen thought of all the attractive attorneys she’d argued against or chaired cases with—so many pretty women—yet not one of them could touch Marydale’s beauty.

  “Who is she?” Frog asked, descending on the table in a wave of patchouli.

  They were all looking at Marydale.

  “Marydale Rae,” Kristen said.

  Sierra glanced at Kristen.

  Marydale leaned against the bar, one foot kicked up behind her, her glass held loosely between her fingers. Still there was something tense about her posture.

  “Excuse me,” Kristen said, and rose.

  It took a long time to make her way through the crowded room, and she lost sight of Marydale twice. If she leaves, Kristen thought. If she says no… Part of her wanted to flee, to face whatever catastrophe the roads had become. Run back to her room, grab Meatball, drive south until she escaped the snow and the rain and the city with its blue-gray high-rises, to drive until she reached some sunburned street named Jacinto or Reina del Valle and became someone she had never met before.

  Marydale set her drink down on the bar as Kristen approached.

  “You came back,” Kristen said.

  Marydale regarded her. “I didn’t leave.”

  There was something there. Kristen felt it. “I’m glad.”

  Marydale’s eyes were a sharp, clear blue like the world before smog. She cocked her head to one side and brushed her own cheek, looking significantly at Kristen.

  “What happened there?” she asked.

  Kristen rubbed at her face and looked at the glitter on her fingers.

  “My sister’s friend.”

  Kristen could feel Sierra watching them.

  “It doesn’t suit you,” Marydale said.

  Kristen gazed at the color on Marydale’s arms. A woman blended into a dragon that blended into a wave, not the familiar coloring-book lines of tattoo-parlor samples, but a sweep of real brushwork as though an artist had painted the scene on her body.

  “An ex did them for me.”

  Marydale extended her arm with her wrist up so that Kristen could examine the work. Kristen reached out to touch her, then stopped.

  “An ex?”

  “You didn’t think I’d just been pining for you,” Marydale said, her tone both bitter and flirtatious.

  Kristen swallowed, trying to think of what to say besides yes, because that was exactly what Marydale had been doing in every dream she’d had about her: pining. Now, looking up at Marydale’s sardonic smile, Kristen wondered what cool Portland whiskey drinker wouldn’t want Marydale. She could have her pick of any man or woman in the bar.

  The band played a final chord.

  The lead singer called out, “Everyone! It’s time. Ten, nine…”

  The room counted with him.

  “Three, two, one.” The room cheered. The band struck up the melancholy notes of “Auld Lang Syne.”

  “I…” Kristen stopped.

  “You?” Marydale said, and when Kristen said nothing, Marydale stepped forward so quickly Kristen stepped back. Marydale did not let her retreat. She gripped the back of Kristen’s head and pressed her lips to Kristen’s. A second later, she drew away. Her lipstick had smeared. Kristen touched her own lips and transferred the color to her fingers. She looked around, startled to find that no one was looking. It seemed like the whole room should be staring because everything in the entire world had changed.

  “Would you like to go back to the hotel?” Marydale asked, her voice a soft drawl.

  Kristen nodded.

  “I’m not inviting you to have tea,” Marydale added.

  “I don’t want tea.”

  Marydale produced a jacket of some heavy, canvas material and draped it over Kristen’s shoulders.

  When they were outside, Marydale said, “We’ll have to go to your room. I was supposed to go home tonight.”

  She took Kristen’s hand, her palm rough with calluses. Kristen did not know if she led Marydale to the main hotel building or if Marydale led her. Their clasped hands felt more like a contract than a gesture of affection.

  Inside, the hotel
was quiet. The carpet swerved beneath their feet. The eerie paintings gazed down at them from both sides, little doll girls with large eyes and Cheshire-style cats with grinning fangs.

  “Everybody wants to be a hipster,” Kristen said.

  Marydale looked pointedly at Kristen’s suit. “Not you.”

  Kristen glanced up at her. Not you, she thought.

  Kristen’s room was on the second floor, with a window onto the snowy grounds. Marydale pulled the sheer curtains closed, letting in a filter of moonlight. Then very slowly, very deliberately, she removed Kristen’s glasses, set them on an end table, and kissed her. They said nothing. Kristen’s whole body felt like a tightly strung instrument, and she could not remember the last time she had felt this way, if she ever had—even with Marydale. Their first kisses in Tristess had been gentle and searching. Now desire seized Kristen’s body. She tried to part her legs, to feel the welcome pressure of Marydale’s thigh intertwining with hers, but her narrow skirt thwarted contact. Marydale seemed to sense her distress, although Kristen could not tell if she shared it.

  Marydale guided her back until she was leaning against the wall. Kristen grabbed Marydale’s ass through her pants. Kristen could hear her own breath in her ears.

  “I missed you,” she said, although what she felt was darker and more dazzling.

  “Really?” Marydale murmured. “I think you’re just trying to get me into bed.”

  They were standing very close, their breath mingling. A moment later, Marydale’s hands were in her hair. The calluses on her palms scratched the back of Kristen’s neck, and it seemed to Kristen that nothing had ever felt so erotic or so intimate. She needed to feel the same touch on the most delicate parts of her body.

  With one hand, Marydale braced herself against the wall. The other hand she slid down Kristen’s side, cupping her breast. Then she drew two fingers across the waist of Kristen’s skirt to the place where the fabric pulled tight over Kristen’s sex. Kristen tried to spread her legs, but the skirt held them tight. On this taut drum of fabric, Marydale stroked a slow circle.

  Kristen couldn’t stand the faint touch exactly where she needed more, and she pulled the hem of her skirt up to her waist so Marydale could reach her. In the back of her mind, she wondered why she hadn’t been having sex with everyone all the time because the blend of torment and indulgence felt so good.

  At the same time, she knew; she had been with men. She could have been with women if she’d wanted. And the men she had dated recently were good lovers, better than thoughtful, passionate even. And she always came away from sex feeling embarrassed both by her reticence and her own attempts to hide it behind half-feigned cries of pleasure.

  Now she whispered, “Fuck me,” and she meant it.

  Marydale pressed her fingers into the seam of her nylons. The fabric muffled the touch. Kristen pressed her forehead against Marydale’s neck.

  “Now. Please. Marydale, I can’t wait.” She bit down hard on Marydale’s shoulder.

  Marydale’s lips brushed Kristen’s ear. “I’m going to rip these, okay?”

  Kristen nodded. “Do it.”

  Marydale made a quick, deft motion with both hands, and Kristen heard the fabric rend. Marydale slid a finger between the nylon and Kristen’s underwear, stroking the damp cloth, the pressure of the pantyhose holding her touch close. Then gently, Marydale squeezed her thumb and her fingers together, capturing Kristen’s labia through her underwear, massaging slowly. Inside the cloak of flesh and fabric, pleasure seared Kristen’s clitoris, acute and insufficient. She closed her eyes. Marydale massaged her until Kristen was aware of only this one point of contact.

  She only realized that the muscles behind her knees were giving way when Marydale caught her and wrapped an arm around her and guided her to the bed. Marydale leaned over her, increasing the pressure and speed of her ministrations. The orgasm built beneath Marydale’s touch, inevitable and impossible at the same time.

  “Oh.” Kristen scratched the covers beneath her. “That’s so…That’s so…”

  Marydale slipped her fingers beneath edge of Kristen’s underwear, finding her clitoris. The sensation was exquisite. Kristen felt herself lifting closer and closer to an orgasm that rose just beyond her reach. She closed her eyes. Fragments of memory kaleidoscoped behind her eyelids. Marydale’s farmhouse. A long, straight highway. A bare tree against a snowy sky.

  “Marydale,” she whispered, her eyes closed, her head thrown back. I love you.

  Kristen felt herself grow smaller and smaller until she was nothing more than the tiny point of pleasure at the fulcrum of her body and Marydale’s touch. Kristen tensed. Time stopped. Kristen poised on the edge of orgasm. Then she was coming, her body dissolving into Marydale’s hand like sugar.

  “You’re amazing,” Kristen said when she had caught her breath.

  Marydale kissed her forehead. “A girl learns a few things in prison,” she said, and her voice was light, but later, when Kristen tried to touch her, Marydale mounted her instead, pressing her damp body against Kristen’s thigh. It felt good to feel Marydale’s weight and watch her face strain, but at the same time, Marydale seemed far, far away.

  When she rolled off Kristen, Kristen could not tell if Marydale had come, so she asked, “What can I do to make you happy?”

  “Happy,” Marydale said, as though it was a question she had pondered and forgotten. “This isn’t supposed to make us happy.”

  3

  Marydale rose and dressed quietly. Dawn was turning the hotel window into a square of deep blue. In the bed before her, Kristen slept, looking vulnerable, her glasses on the bedside table, a length of blanket clutched in her arms. But even the women at Holten Penitentiary had looked vulnerable when they slept, and when Kristen woke, she wouldn’t be the girl Marydale had kissed in the old farmhouse in Tristess. Gone was the girlish lawyer in her cheap, unlined suits. Gone was the baby fat. Gone was Kristen’s hesitation, her uncertainty. I’ve never done this with a girl before. She was all sinew now, her body an accomplishment. It was a sign to other women: I’ve won.

  Marydale felt a pang of sadness at the fact that she would never know which sport had turned Kristen’s calves into hard muscle, would never watch Kristen cross a finish line, but she wouldn’t. She had promised herself that as she waved goodbye to Aldean. Be careful, he had called after her. I’m just curious. She had saluted Aldean casually. Hey, it’s New Year’s Eve.

  But it was more than New Year’s Eve, and she wished she had something to leave Kristen, a little poem scrawled on one of the Deerfield postcards, something to say, I remember. She had a case of the Solstice Vanilla still left in her truck, but this new incarnation of Kristen Brock was no poet and no drinker. Even if it was true that the Solstice chilled with a large cube of ice had an aftertaste of tears, Kristen wouldn’t know how many Marydale had shed for her. Even if she did, it didn’t matter. Kristen had left, and she had not looked back, and maybe she had been right to leave all along.

  Marydale’s mournful thoughts were interrupted by the unnervingly unexpected presence of a bulldog sitting on an easy chair by the window, looking like an imperial toad or like one of the bizarre Deerfield Hotel paintings come to life. I watched you, it seemed to say. She couldn’t imagine that she had entered the room, made love to Kristen, and slept through the night and not noticed the dog, but the thought that someone had snuck it into the room while they were sleeping, like some weird hipster room service, was equally implausible.

  Tentatively she ran her hand over the dog’s stony skull. It displayed a wide, pink smile. Marydale shook her head. She knew dogs, and it was certainly harmless. Take care of her, she mouthed, glancing at Kristen one last time. Then she slipped out the door, blinking back tears as she strode down the hall toward the snow and the blue dawn.

  Outside, the early light was thin as skim milk and the roads were packed with ice. Stranded cars littered the highway, and it was almost ten by the time Marydale reached her houseboat, th
e Tristess, on the river beneath the St. John’s Bridge. Next door, on the deck of the Beautiful Wreck, Aldean stood smoking a cigarette, shirtless in jeans and an old hunting jacket. With a shade of stubble on his cheeks, he looked like something out of an L.L.Bean catalog, what country was supposed to look like—minus the cigarette, of course.

  Marydale made her way down the metal gangplank that led to their shared pier. “Happy New Year,” she called out, trying for a cheer she did not feel.

  “You’re home early,” Aldean said. “No breakfast after?”

  “I’m going to make eggs,” Marydale said. “That’s breakfast.” She threw one leg over the side of her boat. “You coming?”

  A moment later, Aldean let himself into her kitchen, a cigarette still lit in one hand.

  “Did you at least leave a note?” he asked.

  Marydale handed Aldean a mug for the ashes. “Aren’t you worried you’ll get hooked again?” she asked. “It took you forever to quit.”

  Aldean sat down at the small counter that doubled as a dining table. Marydale cleared away a stack of sketches she’d done of a new still.

  “That’s why I only smoke on New Year’s Day, and that’s the point. People think the goal is to eliminate temptation, sin, vice, pleasure.” Aldean inhaled. “Where would we be then? We run a distillery.” He tapped his cigarette against the rim of the mug. “Temptation is where the human and the animal meet. Give up the craving for salt, and you give up the craving for blood.”

  “You’re a fucking philosopher.” Marydale reached into the micro-fridge for a carton of eggs. “How are Marlboro Lights part of our animal nature?”

  “They are.” He stubbed out his cigarette and lit another with a lighter from his pocket.

  Marydale cracked four eggs into a skillet on the one-burner stove.

  “So, Kristen Brock.” Aldean crossed his ankle over his knee and leaned his chair back until the front legs lifted off the floor. “I’m guessing you didn’t just talk about old times.”