True Colors (30 page)

Dallas stared down at it, touched the glass as if for once it wouldn’t stop his hand.

Vivi Ann knew what he saw: a boy. The years of Dallas’s incarceration could be seen on the changing face of his son. Noah was taller, thinner; he’d left babyhood behind this year. And he’d stopped asking about the daddy he didn’t remember.

“He misses you,” Vivi Ann said.

“Don’t do that,” he said. “We don’t have much left. Let’s at least be honest.”

She should have known better than to lie to him. They were separated now, kept apart by razor wire and Plexiglas and concrete, but the connection between them was as strong as ever. “If you’d let me bring him to see you—”

“We’ve had this discussion. He doesn’t need to see me like this. It’s better if he forgets me.”

“Don’t say that.”

They fell silent after that, staring at each other through the dirty plastic, holding on to big black phone receivers, with nothing to say. She wasn’t sure how long it went on, their quiet, but when the end-of-visiting-hours alarm buzzed, she flinched.

“You look tired,” Dallas said finally.

She wanted to pretend not to know what he was talking about, to lie to him again—this time with a confused smile—but she knew he saw the truth on her face, in her weary eyes. In the years of his imprisonment it had grown increasingly difficult to pretend there was a different future waiting for them. They had both lost weight; Roy said last month that they looked like a pair of walking skeletons. Dallas’s face, always sharp, had grown hollow and gaunt. The veins and sinews in his neck were like tree roots protruding just beneath the soil.

Time had left its mark on Vivi Ann’s face, too; she could see the changes in her mirror every morning. Even her hair had grown dull and stringy from too few cuttings and too little care. She was thirty-two, but looked nearly a decade older than that.

“It’s hard,” she said softly.

“Are you still taking those pills?”

“Hardly ever.”

“You’re lying,” he said.

She looked at him, loving him so much it was a physical pain in her chest. “How do you get through it?”

He leaned back. They rarely did this, rarely left the path of pretend and stepped onto the hard cement of reality. “When I’m out in the yard, I find a place that is empty, and I stand there and close my eyes. If I’m lucky, the noise will sound like hoof-beats.”

“Renegade,” she said.

“I remember riding him at night . . . that night.”

Their eyes met; the memories were vibrant, electric. “That was our first time . . .”

“How do you get through it?”

Pills
.
Booze
. She looked away, hoping he didn’t notice. “Out on the porch, I have one of the wind chimes my mom made. When she was sick, she gave them to me and said that if I listened closely, I’d hear her voice in their sound. And I did. I do.” She looked at him again. “Now I hear you, too. I wait for the wind sometimes . . .”

She fell silent. That was the thing about memories; they were like downed electrical cables. It was best to stand back.

“Have you heard from Roy?” she asked.

“No.”

“We’ll hear soon,” she said, wanting to believe it, trying to. “The federal court will hear your case. You’ll see.”

“Sure,” he said. Then he stood up. “I gotta go.”

She watched him hang up the phone and back away.

“I love you,” she said.

He mouthed the words back to her, and then he was gone. The door clacked shut behind him.

She sat there alone, staring at his empty cubicle for so long that a woman came up and tapped her on the shoulder.

Mumbling an apology, Vivi Ann got up and walked away.

The drive home seemed to take longer than usual. As one mile spilled into the next, she tried to remain steady. There were so many things she couldn’t think about these days, and if she really concentrated, she could hold back the fear. During the daylight hours, at least. The nights were their own kind of hell; even overmedicating herself only worked some of the time.

In town, she eased her foot off the gas and slowed down. All around her, she saw proof that while she’d been suspended in the gray-black world of the criminal justice system, life here had gone on. The trees along Main Street were riots of autumn color; the first few of the dying leaves had begun to fall. The Horsin’ Around Tack Shop was advertising their yearly sale and the drugstore had a window display full of ghosts and pumpkins.

Trick or treat, Mrs. Raintree?

She flinched and hit the gas. The old truck coughed hard and lurched forward.

At the ranch, she pulled up into the trees and consulted her watch. It was three o’clock. That gave her one hour to feed the horses and be at Aurora’s in time to pick up Noah.

Noah.

There was another truth she tried to avoid. She was becoming a useless parent. She loved her son like air and sunlight, but every time she looked at him another piece of her heart seemed to fall away.

She would have to change that. Tomorrow she’d stop taking the Xanax and get back to the business of living. She had to, whether she wanted to or not.

Feeling a tiny bit better with this goal (she’d made it before, but this time she meant it; this time she’d really do it), she headed for the loafing shed, where they kept enough bales of alfalfa for a week. Opening the door, she pulled out the wheelbarrow and stacked it with flakes of hay.

In the barn, she snapped on the lights and began feeding the horses, going from stall to stall. Here, she found a measure of peace again, and she was very nearly smiling when she un-latched Clem’s stall door.

“Hey, girl, have you missed me?”

There was no answering nicker, no whisper of a tail whooshing from side to side.

Vivi Ann knew the minute she stepped onto the fresh shavings.

Clementine lay crumpled against the stall’s wooden wall, her massive, graying head lolled forward.

Vivi Ann stood utterly still, knowing that if she tried to move she’d fall to her knees. It took work just to breathe. In that moment, in the cool, shadowy familiarity of this barn that had always been her favorite place in the world, she remembered everything about this great mare. Their whole lives had been lived together.

Remember when you stepped in that hornet’s nest . . . when you jumped the ditch and I landed in the blackberry bushes . . . when we won State for the first time
?

Swallowing hard, Vivi Ann moved forward and dropped to her knees in the pale pink shavings at Clem’s belly. She reached out and touched the mare’s neck, feeling the coldness that shouldn’t be there. There were so many things to say to this great animal—her last real link to her mother—but none of that was possible now. Vivi Ann’s throat felt swollen; her eyes stung. How would she go on without Clem? Especially now, when so much had been lost?

She scratched Clem’s graying ears. “You should have been out in the sunlight, girl. I know how much you hate this dark stall.”

That made her think of Dallas and the cell he was in, and loneliness and grief overwhelmed her. She lay down against her mare, curling into the fetal position against her comforting flank, and closed her eyes.

Goodbye, Clem. Tell Mom I said hey
.

Time kept going; inching, lurching, slowing, but always moving. The year 2000 drained away in a blur of gray and empty days and endless nights. Noah had started kindergarten at five (too early, Vivi Ann thought; she should have held him back a year, would have if Dallas were here, but he wasn’t), and T-ball at six and soccer at seven. She missed all of his Saturday games; it was just one more thing to feel guilty about. Aurora always offered to come with her to the prison, but Vivi Ann refused the offer. She could only do it alone.

Then, finally, in the first week of September 2001, she got the call she’d been waiting for.

“Mr. Lovejoy would like to see you today.”

It was good news. Vivi Ann knew it. In all the years of Dallas’s imprisonment, never before had Roy asked Vivi Ann to come to his office for a meeting.

Thank you, God,
Vivi Ann thought as she got ready that morning. That sentence cycled through her mind, gaining the speed of a downhill racer, until she could hardly think of anything else.

On her way out of town, she stopped at the school and picked up Noah. After all that they’d been through, he deserved to be there on the day they got the good news.

“I’m going to miss recess,” Noah said beside her. He was playing with a pair of plastic dinosaurs, making them fight on the front of his bumper seat.

“I know, but we’re going to get news about your daddy. We’ve been waiting so long for this. And I want you to remember this day, that you were here for it.”

“Oh.”

“Because I never gave up, Noah. That’s important, too, even though it was really hard.”

He made sound effects to go along with the dinosaurs’ epic battle.

Vivi Ann turned up the radio and kept driving. In Belfair, the town at the start of the Canal, she drove to Roy’s office, which was housed in an older home on a small lot beside the bank.

“We’re here,” she said, parking. Her heart was beating so fast she felt light-headed, but she didn’t take one of her pills, not even to calm down. After today, she’d never take one again. There would be no need, not once their family was together. Helping Noah out of his seat and taking him by the hand, she walked up the grass-veined cement path to the front door.

Inside, she smiled at the receptionist. “I’m Vivi Ann Raintree. I have a meeting with Roy.”

“That’s right,” the receptionist said. “Go on through that door. He’s expecting you.”

Roy sat at his desk, talking on the phone. Smiling at her entrance, motioning for her to sit down, he said something else into the phone and hung up.

Vivi Ann put Noah on the sofa behind her, told him to play quietly; then she took a seat opposite Roy’s desk.

“You made it over here in record time,” he said.

“I’ve been waiting years for this phone call, haven’t I? Haven’t we?”

“Oh,” Roy said, frowning. “I should have thought of that.”

“Though of what?”

“What you’d think.”

Vivi Ann felt herself tensing. “You called to tell me his federal appeal has been granted, right?”

“Technically it’s a writ of habeus corpus, but no, that’s not my news.”

Behind her, Noah’s voice grew louder, as did the clacking together of his dinosaurs, but Vivi Ann couldn’t hear much of anything over the sudden roar of white noise in her head. “What is your news?”

“I’m sorry, Vivi Ann. We were denied again.”

Slowly she closed her eyes. How could she have been so naïve? What was wrong with her? She knew better than to believe in hope. She took a deep breath, released it, and looked at him.

She knew she looked calm and composed, as if this new setback were just another bump in a bad stretch of road. She wouldn’t let herself fall apart until tonight. She’d had years of practice at waiting, pretending, hiding. “May I have a glass of water?”

“Sure. It’s right there.”

She got up, walked carefully to the pitcher of water set up on the sideboard. Pouring herself a glass, she reached into her pocket and pulled out a pair of pills, swallowing them before she turned around. “Does Dallas know?”

“Yesterday,” Roy said.

Vivi Ann sat down, hoping the numbness would come fast. She couldn’t stand what she was feeling. “What now? Who do we appeal to?”

“I’ve done everything I can on his case, pled every argument, filed every motion, sought every appeal. I’m not a public defender anymore—you know that. I’ve been doing all this pro bono, but there’s nothing more I can do. You could get another lawyer, say I was incompetent, and hell, maybe I was. I would help you in that if you wanted.” He sighed. “I don’t know, Vivi. I just know we’re done now. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t say that.” She heard the shrill desperation in her voice, the sharp edge of anger, and tried to soften it with a smile. “I’ve been hearing that for years, from everyone. I’m tired of it. We need you, Roy, to prove his innocence.”

Roy glanced away.

In that furtive look, Vivi Ann saw something. “Roy? What is it?”

“Nothing. I just . . . had a heart-to-heart with Dallas this week. Finally.”

“You know he’s innocent, right, Roy? You’ve said it to me a million times.”

“I really can’t comment on that anymore.”

Now she was afraid. Was Roy implying that Dallas had confessed to him? She got to her feet and stood there, looking down at him. “I can’t take this shit, Roy. Please. Don’t screw with my head.”

He looked up slowly, his eyes sad. “Talk to Dallas, Vivi Ann. I’ve made arrangements for you at the prison for tomorrow.”

“That’s it? That’s what you have for me after all these years?”

“I’m sorry.”

She spun away and went to Noah, grabbing his hand and dragging him out of the office and down the steps and into the truck.

All the way home, she replayed it in her head, trying to change it, soften it. At Aurora’s house, she shoved Noah at her sister, saying, “I can’t deal with him tonight.”

She heard Aurora calling out to her, telling her to come back, but she didn’t care. Fear was like a great black beast standing in her peripheral vision and she was desperate to get away, to get numb.