“What are you doing here?” she asked.
“Aldean came by this afternoon,” Aubrey said.
The kitchen suddenly felt crowded, and the air tightened around Aubrey and Marydale.
“He said I should look in on you.”
Marydale said nothing.
“We’re heading to the swap meet.” Aubrey took a tentative step forward. “I just thought I’d come by and say I’m glad it all worked out.”
“You married Amos Holten,” Marydale said.
“He doesn’t know I’m here.” Her next words came out in a rush. “Aldean said I should have spoken up back then. I know what Aaron said—that he’d kill you—and I should have made someone listen. I went along with it, and that was wrong. I just…I’m sorry.”
“You’re sorry!”
Kristen thought she had never seen Marydale look so beautiful or so fierce.
“I’m glad you’re out,” Aubrey wheedled. “I always knew you’d get out of Tristess. It’s no excuse, me going out with Aaron and all, but it wasn’t that I didn’t care about you. I just knew you wouldn’t stay. I was always gonna be a Tristess girl, but you weren’t. We all knew that.”
“I wasn’t going to stay? I had to stay. I went to prison!” Marydale wasn’t yelling, but her voice was like an earthquake deep beneath the ground. “You could have fought for me. You could have called…someone. You could have helped me.”
“I couldn’t tell people the truth.”
“What truth?”
Aubrey clutched the baby to her chest. The little boy hid behind her knees. Except for Marydale’s breath, the room was completely silent.
“That I’d been with you,” Aubrey said. “That’s why he did it, because he knew I’d never like him as much as I liked you. I couldn’t go up in front of a courtroom and say that.”
“But everyone knew!”
“It was different back then. Don’t you remember? It was okay to be…the way we were…if you didn’t throw it in people’s faces.”
“I went to prison!”
“I said I’m sorry. I came here to say I’m sorry.”
“You let me go to prison…you married a Holten…because you couldn’t tell people you liked a girl? You couldn’t stand up for me. You couldn’t stand up for yourself for one—”
Kristen thought she saw Marydale open her mouth to say fucking then look at the little boy. The word came out in a sharp, silence enunciation.
“—second. You couldn’t just say this is who I am, and this is what I want?”
“It was easier for you,” Aubrey whispered. Her cheeks had flushed. “We were really young.” Aubrey’s voice trembled. “You were so strong, I thought… I’m sorry.”
“You don’t get to—”
The little boy at Aubrey’s feet let out an agonized sob. Marydale stopped and dropped to her knees before the boy.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I raised my voice to your mother. I shouldn’t have done that.”
The boy pressed his check to Aubrey’s leg, staring at Marydale with big eyes.
“I won’t do that again.”
Marydale didn’t try to pat the boy or hug him. When she rose, the anger had drained out of her face. She looked older. Kristen remembered seeing her at the Deerfield whiskey tasting and thinking that five years had aged Marydale more than they should have and that she was still beautiful. Perhaps she was more beautiful.
“I’m sorry, Aubrey,” Marydale said.
Tentatively, Aubrey said, “I just wanted to see you, to say goodbye. You and your ma were always special. Sun always shone a little brighter on you. Everyone knew it. I just wanted to tell you.”
Marydale hesitated for a moment, then said, “Thank you.”
Aubrey gave Marydale an awkward one-armed hug, the baby between them. Marydale touched its head gently.
“She’s cute,” Marydale said.
“Thanks.” Aubrey smiled. “Take care of yourself, Marydale.”
On their way out, Kristen heard the boy say, “She’s scary.”
“That’s because she’s so powerful, like a superhero,” Aubrey said. “Do you remember Superwoman? And you know what else? Marydale was the most beautiful rodeo queen in the whole world.”
“In the whole world?”
“Yep. In the whole world.”
“Come on,” Henry said as their voices faded. “Let’s get this fire going so we can grill some burgers.” He put his hand on Frog’s shoulder. “And veggie burgers.”
22
Marydale stood in her mother’s kitchen, which was no longer her mother’s or hers although the shelves and the baseboards were as familiar as her own skin; a coat of paint couldn’t change that. Henry and Annette watched her, looking hopeful.
“You belong here,” Annette said.
“It’ll be fun,” Sierra chimed in. “We’re going to cook out, and Henry and Annette have invited some people from Tristess who want to meet you.”
“A lot of people are mad at Ronald Holten,” Henry added. “This is a win for all of them, for all of Tristess. They want to thank you.”
“It’ll be potluck,” Annette said. “Just a little get-together. People who care ’bout you.”
Marydale felt good old-fashioned courtesy pulling on her, like a familiar song she couldn’t hear without humming along. She was supposed to say, Well, gosh, I don’t deserve all that, but if everyone’s gone to all that trouble, and of course I’d love to see folks again. It’s been too long. Then someone would ask, How many times did you win that rodeo competition? She knew the script, and she knew her role, and she said, “No!” The word flew out of her mouth before she realized what she was going to say.
Kristen put a hand on Marydale’s shoulder.
Marydale turned to her. “Do you mind if we leave today?” she asked.
Kristen’s expression said, Did I ever want to be here? To the gathering in the kitchen, she said, “If Marydale and I leave now, we can make it back to Portland by midnight.”
Annette and Henry protested, but Kristen held up her hand, polite but final. Marydale hid her smile until they were outside. The sky had cleared, and behind the house, the Firesteed Mountains rose up and up, their outline crisp against the blue. There was a faint hint of green between the last patches of snow. She hadn’t seen it from the prison yard. And it felt like a great luxury to leave all that beauty behind.
“Mind if I drive?” Marydale asked.
Kristen beamed. “Go for it.”
Marydale pushed Kristen’s seat back, adjusted the mirrors, and tuned to the local radio station. On the way out of town they stopped at the Arco for coffee. Kristen poured herself a twenty-ounce cup, tasted it, and said, “Ah! This stuff is awful.” Then she wrapped an arm around Marydale’s waist and added, “I can’t wait to be back in Portland with you.”
Marydale leaned down and kissed her with a quick, loud smack. The woman behind the counter glared. Marydale tossed her hair over her shoulder. She was still wearing the suit Kristen had brought to the prison. Kristen hadn’t guessed her size quite right, and the pants hung off her hips, while the cuffs revealed inches of wrist, but it didn’t matter. She felt like she was wearing her full rodeo regalia with Trumpet’s reins in her hands.
“Did you see that woman in there?” Kristen said as they exited the mini-mart, bags of snacks hanging off their arms and coffees in hand. “She looked like she’d swallowed tack. I mean really…two women. Is it still that shocking?”
Marydale stopped. The attendant was watching them through the window. She caught her eye, then kissed Kristen again, their bags tangling and their coffees sloshing.
“Shocking!” Marydale said.
Then, like a gleeful child, she broke into a run. To her surprise, Kristen followed, her suit jacket flapping.
“Let’s get out of here,” Kristen said.
Marydale revved the engine of Kristen’s Audi the way Aldean had taught her to rev her first Dodge pickup, and they sped out of the p
arking lot and onto the wide-open highway. The radio blared a triumphant country anthem about a pretty woman and a tailgate party. Marydale sang along, and Kristen laughed.
“I’ve never heard this song in my life.”
“That song was my life,” Marydale said.
When the radio died away in the high desert between Tristess and Burnville, Marydale and Kristen clasped their hands over the gearshift and talked. Their talk veered from Ronald Holten to Gulu to Nyssa and Eric Neiben and, in between the serious truths, their laughter came easily, like groundwater running just beneath the surface. Kristen told her about Grady carefully picking the pine nuts off his steak at the Heavenly Harvest. They imagined the HumAnarchists in Tristess, trying to get the old ranchers to draw mandalas. Although the drive was long, Marydale felt as though she would never get tired. And she marked each county line in her heart.
When they finally arrived in Portland, Marydale threw herself on the bed in Kristen’s spacious bedroom, letting the city lights wash over her.
“We’re home!” she said.
“Does it feel like home?” Kristen asked.
“You feel like home,” Marydale said.
Kristen set her glasses on the bedside table and fell into Marydale’s open arms. Their first kiss was slow and gentle, as they explored each other’s bodies carefully like new lovers.
Kristen lifted Marydale’s shirt over her head and unclasped her bra. And Marydale had the feeling that she was something Kristen had worked hard to achieve and was now enjoying fully. She was part of Kristen’s life—not a strange exception, not a secret. They were friends and lovers and equals. And she could give herself to Kristen completely because her body was hers to give. Her blood, her bones, her sex, her dreams: they were hers, and she was free.
Then they were casting off blankets and swimming in the sea of pillows. Kristen spoke endearments and compliments, her voice growing rougher as their movements grew more hurried. Marydale gave herself entirely to Kristen’s touch. The slight tension that had always stayed in her neck, the sense that she should hold back or finish faster, was gone. She opened her legs for Kristen’s fingers. Kristen found the perfect blend of pressure and movement. Then, a moment later, Kristen’s lips and tongue were swirling across Marydale’s body. Marydale heard herself whispering a joyous litany of cries.
“Yes. Harder. Please.”
She closed her eyes. Looking inward, she could see the constellation of nerves in her own body as Kristen filled her with her fingers and swept her tongue back and forth across Marydale’s clit, bringing her closer and closer until her body turned to liquid gold, and she was the sunrise spilling over the Firesteed Summit, and she was the spring rains washing the city clean, and she was the first taste of a fine whiskey, and she was loved.
As soon as the last spasm of orgasm flickered out, she touched Kristen’s back, urging her to roll over. Marydale guided her to the foot of the bed, so Kristen’s knees bent over the edge. Then she knelt in the pile of blankets on the floor.
“I missed you,” Marydale whispered as she sank her tongue into the warm salt of Kristen’s body.
When Kristen’s body was so taut Marydale could not feel her breathing, she took Kristen’s hand and guided it to the place where she kissed, running her tongue over Kristen’s clit and Kristen’s fingers in beautiful collaboration. Kristen cried out when she came, and in her pleasure Marydale heard their whole story. The cautious girl Marydale had kissed on her porch swing. Their first lovemaking. Their loneliness. The snow on the Deerfield Hotel. The distillery. Aldean’s quick diagnosis: You love her in your blood. Kristen’s tears on the Summit and her pride. We won.
Epilogue
Kristen could not prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Portland’s first annual Rose City Rodeo was the strangest incarnation of the rodeo ever, but a preponderance of the evidence pointed in that direction. She stood in the shade of the Sadfire Distillery, enjoying the summer spectacle.
At Marydale’s urging, the rodeo featured only those events that had been certified cruelty-free by all major animal rights organizations and certified animal fun by Sierra’s spinoff nonprofit the HumAnimal Collective. This, along with the constraints of space—the rodeo was hosted in the small industrial park that housed the distillery—left the rodeo without the traditional calf roping and bronco riding.
The PDX Bike Co-op subbed in with a variety of bike-like contraptions. As Kristen watched, a man in a top hat cycled by on a bicycle ten or twelve feet tall. Pugs in the Park had agreed to host a pug meet-up in lieu of the usual small-livestock competitions. Kristen stood in the fenced-in space, awash with brachycephalic dogs, to which Meatball happily added his number. Some of the dogs were in costume, and the rodeo queen—a very pretty boy named Duchess—was handing out organic dog biscuits and blue ribbons to all the contenders. Across the way, two women had brought alpacas and were doing a weaving demonstration while the source of the wool wandered over to the popcorn stand to graze.
Despite Sierra’s avowal that Fishbowl Pocket Moon never played small shows, they were, in fact, a trio of not-so-starving real estate brokers who would play any weekend venue that invited them. They were setting up near the Sadfire tasting booth where Aldean and Marydale were already pouring samples of their latest release, the Rodeo Queen Revival. Behind the tasting booth a twenty-foot banner bore the Sadfire logo, the motto slightly modified. At Marydale’s request, she and Aldean had changed the order of the words so it now read DOLERE. SPERO. AMANT. Grieve. Hope. Love. Kristen was so entranced by the rodeo and by watching Marydale pouring whiskey that she didn’t notice Donna striding over.
“Can you explain any of this to me?” Donna asked, staying safely on the non-puggy side of the plastic fence.
Kristen couldn’t stop smiling. “No,” she said. “None of it.”
Marydale lit a torch, its whiskey-soaked flames flickering in the late-afternoon sunshine. She held it up to the gathered crowd, then lowered it into her mouth until it disappeared.
“Has she thought about my offer?” Donna asked. “We start with Tristess County. Wrongful imprisonment. Nepotism. Then we go after Ronald Holten in civil court. He’s broke, but he’s got a lot of assets. Where Marydale came from, there are bound to be more lawsuits. It’ll open a whole new division for Falcon Law.”
Marydale’s voice drifted over the crowd. “Now, here you’re going to taste some things you don’t expect. There is a sweetness to the Rodeo Queen Revival that should come as a surprise and yet not a surprise. It’s the sun rising over familiar terrain, a girl’s first glimpse of her own beauty. It’s a woman looking back. It’s love, both ethereal and carnal, and yes, you can taste the salt of a woman’s body in that sweetness.”
“I’ll remind her that you asked,” Kristen said.
“Convince her!” Donna said. “This is the Powerball jackpot of civil rights lawsuits. Why wouldn’t she say yes?”
Kristen watched Marydale raise her glass to the flame. “I think she feels like she’s already won.”
“And you?” Donna asked. “When are you going to come back to the Falcon Law Group? We’re going to sue Tri-State Global for price fixing. It’ll be great. You could be front and center on that one. You can’t just hide away doing small claims and I don’t know…What are you doing?”
Kristen thought of her private practice with the window looking onto the tree-lined street and a bed for Meatball in the corner. Most days, Kristen drove up to Sadfire for lunch. As soon as the weather had cleared, she and Marydale had taken to eating sandwiches on the deck of the Tristess. They were always off work by five, and the city spread itself out for them like a banquet of concerts and the food fairs and the strange festivals to which the Rose City Rodeo added its number.
She didn’t remind Donna that a quarter of the Falcon Law Group’s clients had followed her to her new practice, as was their legal right.
“A lot of small-business stuff,” Kristen said casually. “A little defense work. A few parol
e cases. Tri-State Global says they might be getting sued. We’ve been talking. I haven’t taken a retainer yet. I’m being selective.”
“Damn you,” Donna said with grudging admiration. “But you should be selective with us.”
From behind the bar, Marydale caught sight of Kristen, tipped her white Stetson, then blew her a kiss.
“Thanks,” Kristen said. “But I’ve got everything I want right here.”
Please see the next page for an excerpt from Karelia Stetz-Waters’s Something True.
Chapter 1
It was late June, the kind of warm summer evening when hopeless romantics make bad choices about beautiful women. The twilight was all watery, yellow-blue brightness, and Portland glowed with the promise of warm pavement and cool moonlight. It was, as it turned out, a dangerous mix for Tate Grafton, who stood at the till of Out in Portland Coffee trying to make out what her boss had done to the change drawer.
“How is it possible,” she called without looking up, “that you are eight dollars over, but it’s all in nickels?”
Just then, the wind chime on the door tinkled. It was because of that evening light that came from nowhere and everywhere at the same time and filled the city with a sense of possibility that Tate did not say, “Sorry, we’re closed.”
The woman who had just walked in wore her hair pulled back in a low ponytail and had the kind of sleek magazine blondness that Tate was required, as a feminist, to say she did not like. And she did not like it in magazines. But in real life, and in the dangerous twilight that filtered through the front window, the woman was very pretty. She did not carry anything. No laptop. No purse. Not even a wallet and cell phone clutched in one hand. Nor did she have room in the pockets of her tight jeans for more than a credit card. Tate noticed.
The woman stood in the doorway surveying the coffee shop, from the exposed pipes, to the performance space, to the mural of Gertrude Stein. Right down to the cracked linoleum floor. Then she strode up to the counter and asked for a skinny, tall latte with Sweet’N Low.
For Good Page 27
