For Good

by Karelia Stetz-Waters

  When they made love, Kristen felt her body shrink to a single point of pleasure and concentration, like a first star. And even as she felt herself distilled into that intensity, the room expanded, spreading out over the water, over the city, above the rain into the night sky.

  When they were sated, Kristen and Marydale resumed their conversation and talked until the dawn light turned the tiny porthole window gray. At work the next morning, at the ubiquitous partners’ meeting, Donna Li’s voice washed over Kristen like so much traffic noise. Donna had to ask her three times whether Kristen had invited the Steward-Gore partners to the corporate law banquet.

  “That’s the Saturday before DataBlast,” Falcon interjected. “You can’t bother her with that.”

  “It’s one phone call. Kristen, did you call them or not?” Donna asked.

  “What?” Kristen said dreamily. “No. I didn’t call them.”

  Meanwhile, north of town, in the distillery, Marydale pulled a ladleful of mash from the fermentation tank, swirled it in her mouth, and spit it into one of the drains in the concrete floor. She couldn’t tell if it was ready. Everything tasted good. The stale Little Debbie Snack Cake she had bought at the mini-mart south of Diablo’s tasted as fine as any organic raisin brioche from the Pearl Bakery. Even the smells of the city wafting around the little convenience store—diesel and tar and damp cigarette butts—smelled right, because the whole world was right.

  Aldean ambled up to Marydale where she stood pondering the fermentation. He clapped a cheerful hand on her shoulder.

  “Haven’t see you in around…oh…forty-eight hours.” He took the ladle from her and tasted the tank. “Not ready yet, is it?”

  Marydale looked down to hide her smile.

  “Look at you.” Aldean chuckled.

  “I know you’re going to tell me to be careful. Hit it and quit it, right?”

  Marydale looked up at the tanks and the industrial halogen lights suspended from bars across the ceiling.

  “Fuck careful,” Aldean said. “You’re in love.”

  9

  On the night of the corporate law party, Marydale dressed in the tiny bathroom on board the Tristess. It had been a long time since she’d worn a real dress, and the shimmering red fabric felt strange against her skin. The crepe gripped her belly, and the bra pushed her breasts up and forward. She tugged at the edges of the underwire.

  She wondered if the red had been a bad choice. The color accented her tattoos, and in the store she had liked the dyke-prom-queen contrast between the ink and the dress. Now it felt too garish for a lawyers party

  When Marydale stopped by the Falcon Law Group to take Kristen out to lunch, every woman she saw wore a slim, gray pencil skirt, and even though spring had blossomed in the Pearl District, they all wore long sleeves and nylons. They were all runners. And Marydale loved that leanness on Kristen. She loved how Kristen’s body felt as strong as braided wire and yet vulnerable and small at the same time. Marydale clamped her hands over her own breasts in an attempt to rearrange them into a smaller, more discreet version of themselves. It was too late to buy a different dress now, and she had nothing else in her tiny closet that was appropriate for more than a night at the Doug Fir Lounge.

  She stepped out into the kitchen to show Aldean.

  “Not bad.” Aldean dropped his eyes down to her waist and then back up to her breasts. “They come into a room. That’s for sure.”

  “God! Aldean!”

  “You look great. You’re the fucking rodeo queen.” Aldean lifted a flask to his lips and took a sip. “They’re rodeo sized.”

  Marydale tossed a dish towel at the side of his head.

  “Thank you, because that’s what every girl wants to hear.” She eyed her reflection in the windows. “If I could ride in on Trumpet, it’d be great.”

  “What are you stressing about?” Aldean took another sip. “All those corporate women, they’ve got nothing on you.”

  Marydale sat down on the bench next to him.

  “You’ll do great,” Aldean said.

  “Kristen says she doesn’t care what I tell them, even if I tell them I was in Holten Penitentiary.”

  Marydale took the flask out of Aldean’s hand and took a sip.

  “What are you going to say?” Aldean asked.

  “That I run a distillery.”

  “See?” Aldean said, taking back the flask. “They’re not going to run your name before they pass the champagne. They’re going to think that Kristen Brock got a hot girlfriend, or they’re just going to wonder if Kristen is gay, or they’re not going to think anything at all, because nobody gives a shit.”

  “Do you believe in premonitions?” Marydale asked.

  “No.”

  “Come on. Everyone does.”

  “I don’t believe in premonitions about you going to Kristen’s company party.” Aldean leaned back a little. “You’re hot. You’re going to be the prettiest woman there, and Kristen’s going to love it. You girls may be lesbians or feminists or whatever, but Kristen likes to win, and when you walk into that room, every man there is gonna know she beat the shit out of them in this competition. Do you know why I never hit on you? You know, back in Tristess, before Aaron Holten?”

  “Because I’m a lesbian and your best friend and possibly your cousin.”

  “Yeah, sure. You’re a lesbian and everyone in Tristess is probably some sort of cousin.” Aldean touched two fingers to the bottom of her chin as though gently readjusting a painting hung ever so slightly off-kilter. “You were out of my league, Mary Rae. That’s why. You were always out of my league.”

  “No woman has ever been out of your league.”

  “I want to say yes to that.” He cocked his fingers in the shape of a gun and clicked his tongue. “But a man’s gotta know how far he can ride out. Your mom’d be proud of you.”

  “Because I can still blow out my hair?”

  “Because you’re still you.”

  Marydale felt an old confidence return to her limbs as she lifted herself into the cab of her pickup, careful not to catch her heel on the running board. The pedals felt familiar as she eased onto Highway 30. The roads were slick with rain, but a girl who’d grown up with a 1980 stick-shift Dodge and no power steering could drive an F-150 in the rain. She glanced in the rearview mirror. The smoky black eye shadow and red lipstick that had looked a little tawdry in the Tristess worked in the dark.

  Traffic paused as Highway 30 neared the edge of the Northwest Industrial District.

  “Come on.” She tapped the steering wheel. “What are you waiting for?”

  Suddenly the darkness behind her lit up with a flash of blue and red. She froze, her foot on the brake, her hands gripping the wheel. She felt as though someone had clamped a towel over her mouth, an iron band around her heart. Everything around her came into sharp focus: the dimples on the rubber steering wheel, the raindrops on the windshield, the police lights reflecting in her rearview mirror.

  She scanned the road. It couldn’t be for her. The traffic was crawling. She put on her blinker and checked her blind spot twice, easing up against the side of the curb, holding her breath, waiting for the police cruiser to pull ahead, waiting for the other cars to move over. As soon as the police passed, she would get off the highway. She would find another route. In the back of her mind, Gulu whispered, They know once you’ve been in. Once you’ve been in, you got a caul on you. They can smell it.

  The lights remained in her rearview mirror, alternating red and blue. Marydale’s foot trembled on the brake. Her legs shook. She couldn’t see the police officer in the car, but she thought she saw the cruiser door open.

  No, no, no, she whispered to herself.

  A second later, someone tapped on her window.

  “Roll down.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said, leaning on the window button. “I’m sorry.” She tried to arrange her face.

  “License and registration.”

  All she could see was a d
uty belt and a gun.

  The purse in Marydale’s hands felt strange. She couldn’t undo the clasp. When she finally did, it took her several seconds to pull out her driver’s license.

  The officer leaned down so he could see in her window.

  “Don’t worry,” he said. “Your brake light’s out. That’s all. It’s just a warning. We’re beefing up security down here. People are moving out into the Industrial District, and they’re getting nervous ’cause it’s not the Pearl District, you know?”

  “Yes, sir.” She looked down.

  Act cool, Gulu whispered, but Marydale couldn’t remember what cool felt like. In the back of her mind, she could hear the guards yelling. Inmates. On the ground. Down!

  “And your insurance?” the officer prompted.

  She reached for the glove box.

  “Have you been drinking?”

  Marydale thought of the sip she had taken from Aldean’s flask.

  “No.”

  “Okay. One moment.” The officer excused himself.

  She saw the cell block, three tiers high, all the cells looking down on the same cold breezeway.

  Marydale stared at the window, the raindrops trickling down the glass like tears. She imagined Kristen standing in the ballroom of whatever elegant hall the Falcon Law Group had rented. Marydale could see Kristen scanning the room for her arrival. I’m sorry I have to be there so early, Kristen had said. I wish we could ride together. I can’t wait to show you off.

  I love you, Marydale thought.

  “Ma’am.” The officer’s voice broke through her thoughts. “Please get out of the truck.”

  Her heart seized. She felt the blood in her body stop moving. She was suffocating with the breath still filling her lungs.

  “What is it?”

  The rain hit her face.

  It had been raining the night Aaron had followed her home. She saw him climbing the ladder, his thick hands on the rungs. I’m going to show you something, you fucking dyke. I’m gonna fucking kill you. He was grinning. Help me! she cried. Then he was falling. She was running for the house, for the phone. He was trying to kill me. I think I’ve done something awful. Two cruisers were moving up the gravel drive in a fierce parade of light.

  “You’re under arrest.”

  “That’s not how it happened,” Marydale whispered. “The chief didn’t want to, not right away. He said it was self-defense.”

  “There’s an outstanding warrant. Parole violation. Ma’am, you need to get out of the vehicle and come with me.”

  Marydale wanted to run. She wanted to hurl herself back in time to a moment when this had not happened. She stepped out of the truck.

  Through the haze of her panic, she heard herself say, “I think there might have been a mistake.”

  “Your PO put a warrant in the system. Looks like he thinks you’ve been on abscond for quite some time.”

  “I haven’t done anything. She knows where I am,” Marydale said. “I pay my supervision fee. I tell her if I leave the county. You can call her.”

  The officer shook his head. “I’m sorry. I don’t know the details of your case.”

  The damp air felt frigid against her bare arms.

  “I have to call my girlfriend.” A new fear swelled in her heart. Kristen knew she was on parole. Kristen said she understood. They couldn’t go away on vacation in Ireland. But who could understand this?

  “They’ll take care of that at the jail,” the officer said, unclasping a pair of handcuffs from his belt.

  He reminded Marydale of some of the ranchers in Tristess. His face was kind and craggy at the same time. He was sorry; the thought struck her like a blow. He didn’t want to arrest her, and she hadn’t done anything, and it didn’t matter.

  8

  Kristen stood in front of her desk, a stack of DataBlast files in a neat pile before her. Across the table were strewn her notes from the night before: every hospital, every police station, every sheriff, in Portland, in Salem, in Tristess. Fourteen sleepless hours of searching.

  Aldean had called her as soon as he realized what had happened. She had taken his call in the foyer of the University Club, surprised to hear his voice. He always made her a little nervous. Although they had drunk manhattans on the deck of the Tristess and chatted when she visited the distillery, he watched her warily. He reminded her of Lilith, circling Marydale, friendly but ready to lunge at anyone who threatened her. And Kristen liked him for the love he so obviously bore for Marydale. But when he called her at the University Club, he had felt like a stranger on the other end of the line. Marydale’s been arrested. You know she’s on parole. I can’t find her.

  Now she clutched her phone to her ear.

  “Holten State Penitentiary,” a woman’s voice said.

  There was no How may I help you?

  “I’m looking for…someone.”

  The vocabulary didn’t fit: an inmate, an offender, a parolee. She was looking for Marydale’s cascade of golden hair.

  “I’m with the Falcon Law Group in Portland,” Kristen said. “I’m looking for a parolee. She was arrested last night, and I can’t track her down.”

  “A client?” the woman growled.

  “A client.” The lie stuck in her throat, but client mattered more.

  “Arrested last night?”

  “Yes. Probably around seven. Her name is Marydale Rae.”

  The woman paused. “We don’t have her.”

  “No one has her!”

  “Then she’s probably in transit.”

  “Probably? She’s a human being. Someone needs to know where she is!”

  “If she got arrested in Portland, she wouldn’t be coming here.”

  “She was paroled in Tristess. I’ve called everyone in Portland. Please check to see if you have a record of her.”

  “Hold.”

  Kristen could hear the force with which the woman punched the hold button. There was no friendly elevator music or public service announcements on the line, just silence. Only the green call icon on her phone told her she was still connected.

  Eleven and a half minutes later, a man came on the line.

  “Looking for Rae, Marydale Marie?” he asked. “She’s in transit. Should be here tonight. They got hung up at the Coffee Creek Correctional Facility, waiting for some paperwork to come through. Looks like an abscond. She didn’t have permission to leave the county.”

  “I need to talk to her,” Kristen said. “This is a mistake. She had permission to be in Portland. She’s a business owner.”

  “I’d just call on Wednesday or Thursday. We’re not as busy then. Her PO will put a sanction into the system within fifteen days, and then there’ll be a hearing. Are you representing her?”

  “There shouldn’t even be a hearing. She didn’t do anything wrong!”

  The man sighed. “We just got a new director. Turns out some POs have been letting their nonviolent offenders do whatever. Move. Travel. As long as they stay out of trouble. New director’s been cracking down on that. Cleaning house.”

  “Why are they sending her back to prison?” Kristen asked. “Why not a county jail?”

  “They closed down the women’s jail in Tristess. Everyone’s coming here. It’s a damn mess, if you ask me. We can’t keep a stable population. That’s the whole point of prison. It’s for people who’ve got a year or more. Now we got inmates coming in for two-week parole sanctions. But nobody wants to pay for a woman’s jail, so what are you gonna do?”

  Kristen checked the time on her laptop. She didn’t need to call up Google Maps to know the answer to her question. It was Sunday, and it was nine hours and thirty-two minutes from Portland to Tristess if she didn’t catch any traffic. It would be almost seven in the evening by the time she arrived. If she were going to get back to court in the morning for the first day of DataBlast, she’d be able to stay for only an hour or two before turning back around…if Marydale was even there.

  “How late do you allow visitors
?” she asked.

  “Tuesdays and Thursdays,” the man said. “Ten to four.”

  9

  The nine-hour drive to Tristess County took twenty. Marydale sat in the transport van, dressed in orange scrubs, her hands cuffed in front of her, staring out the window. Eventually she closed her eyes, not to sleep but to see Kristen. Kristen stepping out of the shower, her hair damp against her face. Kristen sitting on a lawn chair on the deck of the Tristess, wearing one of Marydale’s old sweaters, her glasses fogging in the steam from a mug of coffee. Kristen above her as they made love.

  I love you, Marydale thought. She repeated the words over and over in her mind, trying to recapture what she had felt as a teenager kissing girls in the back of her pickup: that it didn’t matter if they got married or bought a parcel and raised sheep. They had kissed. Against all prohibitions, despite the pundits on the AM talk shows screaming about the sanctity of marriage and sins of lust, they had claimed a few seconds of life. That had mattered when she had lived in Tristess. That had comforted her. Now all she felt was a tight, hard pain in her chest.

  After being photographed, fingerprinted, and made to sit in a body-cavity scanner the inmates called the Boss, Marydale was escorted to a windowless office off the main prison wing. She stood in front of the desk of the woman identified as her counselor. Around the office, someone had taped black-framed posters. TEAM: TOGETHER EVERYONE ACHIEVES MORE. DREAM AND THE WINDS WILL CARRY YOU. The photograph of an eagle set against a blue sky made the windowless room even bleaker. The woman looked wilted, like a plant that had lived too long under fluorescent lights.

  “The prison is like a city within a city,” the counselor began. “Everyone in our city has a role to play.”

  The familiar speech: the city inside. They all had responsibilities and jobs. The guards were like the police, making sure that citizens of the city obeyed the laws. But it wasn’t a city. A city had a sky. A city had cherry blossoms. A city had glass high-rises so tall the windmills on their rooftops looked like insects.