For Good (7 page)

“But tomorrow?”

“Of course I'll be here tomorrow.”

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 show 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.

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. Judge 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?”

Marydale woke in the cab of her truck where she had parked at the Firesteed Summit. It took her a moment to realize her phone was ringing, wedged somewhere beneath her hip. She startled more fully awake. It was Kristen. It had to be. She fumbled for the phone and answered it a second before she registered the name on the screen: Aldean.

“Hey, princess,” he said.

She rubbed her eyes. The gorge wasn't beautiful without Kristen. The wildfire smoke had washed the color out of the already muted landscape. The squares of brown farmland looked like failure. There was no water. No one won.

“I need you to come over to the Pull-n-Pay,” Aldean said.

She didn't want to go. She didn't want to talk about the still. She didn't want to sit around drinking warm Coke and whiskey while Aldean smoked and welded, oblivious to the fact that he was one bad valve away from blowing up the place. She didn't want to report to Cody or go to work or listen to Mr. Fisher complain that the meat loaf tasted meatier in 1960. Weariness settled in the very viscera of her body.

“Can I come tomorrow?” she asked.

“Pops is dead,” Aldean said.

Marydale arrived at the Pull-n-Pay an hour later. The sun was up, streaming over the junkyard. Aldean was waiting for her at the gate. He took her hand, which he hadn't done since they were ten. Together they walked through the piles of scrap metal and gutted cars.

Inside, the mobile home smelled of cigarettes and motor oil. Across the small, cluttered living room, Pops lay in his recliner, his mouth partially open, his eyes closed, an ancient man in a flat-brimmed John Deere cap. He didn't really look much deader than usual. Nonetheless, Marydale didn't need to look for the rise of breath to know that he was gone. The stillness in the room was absolute. She and Aldean stood in the doorway for a long time.

Finally Aldean said, “Let's have a toast.”

Marydale didn't mention that it was eight in the morning. It wasn't eight in the morning for Pops.

Aldean retrieved a half-empty bottle of Poisonwood and two glasses from the kitchen cupboard, and they went outside.

“Aren't you going to give him some of your good stuff?” Marydale asked.

“Pops always loved Poisonwood.”

He poured two small glasses. They stood together, the rising sun making giants of their shadows.

“To Pops,” Marydale said.

“To Pops.” Aldean uncorked the bottle again and poured a thin, slow stream of whiskey on the ground.

When it was gone, Marydale asked, “Did you just find him?”

“I think I knew last night, but I didn't want them to come take him away in the middle of the night. It just seemed right that he wake up at home.” His voice broke. “Or wherever he is now.”

Marydale took his hand again, feeling the calluses and smelling the cigarette smoke on his clothes.

“I'm sorry,” she said.

“He was a good man. I don't know what I would have done if he hadn't taken me in,” Aldean said. “My fucking tweaker dad and tweaker mom…If it wasn't for him, I don't know. Sometimes I thought he was just staying alive until I was old enough to take care of myself. You know? Like he was hanging on for me. And sometimes I wanted to say, ‘You can go now.'” Aldean was crying. “He used to make me beans for breakfast. He'd just open the can and put it right on the stove, and he was there
every
morning.”

He squeezed Marydale's hand. “Marydale, I can go now. I can leave. I can sell the Pull-n-Pay and go to Portland.” He looked at her. “Don't worry. I'll get everything ready. I'll start the distillery, and when your PO agrees to a transfer, you can come live with me, and we'll run it together.”

The sun stung Marydale's eyes. The Poisonwood burned her stomach. She saw Kristen's stricken face. She imagined Aldean's old Dodge pulling out of the Pull-n-Pay for the last time. And she wished that her tears were for Pops, who deserved them, but she couldn't even remember his real name—Floyd or Myron—and she clung to Aldean and cried for herself.